Interregnum
by theplaidsheep
Summary: The temporary rule between two reigns. Siegfried and Ivy between SC1 and SC2
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Toys are Namco's not mine, just playing in the sandbox.**

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The heat is stifling, beating against her head and shoulders as though it were a living thing. She wears a cloak to ward off the worst of the sun and the air within the hood is thick and stuffy, but Ivy pays it no mind. Her mind is, in fact, elsewhere. It has been thus these past several days as she wanders aimlessly, heading in what is perhaps the approximate direction of home.

There is no road to follow, the land about is sickly and will likely bear no fruit once Autumn comes. The blazing sun has turned green to yellow and the earth is more dust than dirt.

Ivy remembers that she ran in the end. She had planned to run in the first place but when she finally did it was for wholly different reasons. If that blasted golem had not been so wily she would have been long gone before the end game and still blissful in her ignorance; but the truth she has discovered weighs heavy on her heart and mind, along with the numerous lives that have found their end on the cruel edges of her blade. The blade that even now is drawing it's infernal life from the demonic taint in her blood.

Ivy pushes the thought away, as she is becoming practised to do, ignoring the weight on her back and the quiet hum that is ever present in her mind. Instead she pushes the horse she rides onward, encouraging a brisker walk from it's powerful legs.

The creature she had found wandering aimless at the edge of the killing field, where an entire army had been slain to feed her former master. It had accepted her touch readily enough, probably as pathetically grateful as she to find some ally in this living hell, but Isabella has always been very good with horses and as Ivy it is a skill that has served her well.

The air is preternaturally quiet, as though anything living has long since fled. It has been like this in the week she has been travelling and she can't help but marvel, now that she truly stops to notice, how far the poisonous influence of Soul Edge has spread through the land.

Nightmare's inexorable rampage, in his quest to slake the thirst of his sword, has been evident in the empty farms and desolate villages she has passed since she started her journey. The bones of the slain, lying where they had fallen, gleamed white in the unforgiving sunlight, picked bare by scavenging crows.

She has braved the ghastly, grinning skulls and their accusatory stares just once to raid abandoned stores for supplies. After that she took herself from the beaten path in an unacknowledged attempt to avoid all these monuments to her terrible misdeeds.

It is her horse that finds him first, jerking to a halt and pawing the ground, snorting his refusal to go any further. This surprises Ivy, since she is riding a war-horse and it takes a lot to make one shy, so it is with caution she dismounts and draws her sword.

The ground drops away before her, sloping into the valley of a small stream and she finally sees what has caused her mount to flinch away. Even though the body is unconscious she feels unaccountably threatened, and Ivy Blade responds accordingly, unlinking into the whip that has been the suffering of many.

The armour and the sword, it is all _him, _and her mind is a shrieking fury demanding vengeance. She slithers down the bank with unseemly haste, almost landing herself arse-first in the quick-flowing water. Still the body doesn't move, and it occurs to her that he may in fact be dead; though what explanation there could be for how he got here ahead of her is quite beyond her.

Reigning in her howling fury she commands Ivy Blade back to the sword and then uses it to prod roughly at the collection of armour and limbs.

The groan the body emits is far more human than anything Ivy has ever heard from Nightmare. Still she leaps back at the sound. So the bastard is still alive!

Though perhaps only just, as the limbs then move to laboriously push the body onto it's back. The great helm falls away revealing a head of long, pale hair, matted with dirt and sweat, that mostly covers a face inlaid with grime. Desperate green eyes blink fitfully at the sky, seeking whatever presence has stirred him.

His mouth opens and it takes several attempts before sound of a sort manages to find it's way passed the cracked lips. "Hel...me...p-plea...help..."

Ivy stays beyond his line of sight, staring down at this pathetic vision as it begs for what might never come. Her anger is a cold stone, lying heavy in her chest, and lends a sneer to her lips as she considers this pitiful creature. She should kill him now, put him out of his misery, and the misery of all those who have suffered at his hand... The hand that even now she could see was whole and human, and not the twisted monstrosity she remembers so well.

He squirms weakly on the floor, one arm floundering in the stream as he tries to move himself. The hair falls away from his face, revealing a visage that is unexpectedly young and Ivy feels a flash of surprise that the scourge of Europe is little more than a boy. Finally he sees her and desperately rolls towards her, reaching out with an arm bloodied and covered in grime and fresh mud.

There is no recognition in his gaze as his fingers, nails broken and filthy, grasp without any strength the toe of her left boot. She kicks his hand away with barely an effort, observing his wretched progress as she would an insect. Eventually it seems he exhausts his strength and he slumps face forward into the stream, and Ivy listens to him weep his frustration and despair into the running water.

Ivy feels nothing for him that isn't anger and disgust, for he deserves nothing better. In fact it is all that she feels for herself: a fool so easily deceived and manipulated, she deserves nothing better, either. However, she is still curious despite herself.

How is it he is here, and how is it he is not the monster she served this last year? After her thrashing at the hands of the red shadow – and her pride still stings – she had limped back into the castle, desperate to find him and plead for the truth. She was too late, however, for by the time she came across him it was to find him with the death blow already dealt. Ivy had watched as space warped around and pulled armour and sword into the void that had formed during the battle, leaving nothing behind but the walls of the keep and the two that had defeated him. So Nightmare was gone and all that was left to her was the enormity of what she had done and what she truly was.

Now here she stands, before a broken knight in azure with his broken, crumbling sword, and perhaps now she will get the answers she sought from him. Perhaps it is fate? Ivy's mouth twists at the thought.

She starts back towards her mount, who she finds has ambled a ways back from where she left it, plucking mournfully at the yellow grass, which is likely not to it's taste at all. Here, she supposes, will do for a place to settle for a while; the stream valley isn't very deep but there is enough depth to cast some shadow, and there is fresh water and a small breeze which will give respite from the sun.

This afternoon, she decides with grim certainty, she will get some answers.

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Siegfried's memories are confusing, there is little in them that makes sense. Though he remembers well enough the events of the last three years – and they are a torture all their own - there comes a part where he can't place anything in order. He remembers dying and a darkness that is all consuming, yet he also finally feels the release of shackles that he can't recall ever wearing; he remembers a horrible, terrible fear but also sheer relief of... of freedom finally gained. He remembers howling in fury and desperation, but also screaming in joy and release. He also remembers pain, awful, awful pain and suddenly the darkness is no more and he feels spat out as though from a mouth that has chewed and chewed until it finally gave up.

This place does not seem much better to his addled senses though. The light is harsh and brings a different kind of pain to his head. His limbs feel like dead weights and something not a part of him. And there is heat, burning into skull, into his body, and he feels as though he is boiling away.

Somewhere in the cacophony of his thoughts he registers a dull impact somewhere around his right shoulder. He blindly turns toward the source of this new stimuli but nothing meets his vision but the vast blue arc of the sky.

Finally his situation registers. He is not dead and in hell, Siegfried finally realises, but lying on his back staring up at the sky on the world into which he was born. He hears then the movement behind his head, the shifting of weight on pebbles and he knows with a certainty that someone is there; someone who prodded at his shoulder to check if he was dead and has surprised Siegfried himself with the realisation that he isn't.

He opens his mouth, tries to get words past his lips but his voice fails him and all that emerges is little more than a croak. He tries though, keeps trying, asking for help from this unknown saviour as he desperately tries to get his body into motion, but nothing seems to want to obey him. He feels the coolness of liquid seep in through the mail of his gauntlet and knows that there is water close to him. He moves toward it and finally he sees the one behind him, who in all this time has made no move to help. The sun is behind the figure and blinds him to most of the details, but to his squinting eyes it is most definitely a 'she.' He can see the boots though, finely grained, purple leather and metal guards, and it rings in his mind as something familiar. He rolls towards her, fumbling toward this one thing that has given him some kind of reassurance in an alien seeming world. His fingers settle against the toe but they are dislodged with a casual shake and he is left sprawling face first in pebbles and mud.

Siegfried tries to get moving again, cursing the slowness of his limbs and their lack of strength, the throbbing in his head and the boiling heat robbing him of any lucid thoughts but the urgent need to get moving. However, his body finally betrays him as exhaustion claims it's due, planting his face in the water, and he cannot help but cry like a child in frustration and hurt. The tears flood down his cheeks as if they have never been let loose before, while gasping sobs steal his breath and Siegfried wishes very hard for his mother with her cool hands and gentle voice.

What he gets is something quite different.

"Oh, for god's sake stop snivelling!" the voice is harsh and familiar, but he has no time to dwell as a pair of hands - a _very strong _pair of hands - grab him by the shoulders and haul him upright.

The world spins before him, searing sunlight flashing across his vision, but it finally stops and Siegfried blinks in disbelief to find his eyes bare inches from a very ample pair of breasts and their equally impressive cleavage. He stares, he can't help it, and continues staring even as the hands at his shoulders give him a warning shake. It's only when she slaps him across the face that he finally turns his attention elsewhere, like to how much it hurt.

"I find your eyes wandering again, you'll be mourning their loss," is the warning that reaches his ringing ears.

Siegfried tries once more to talk, to apologise for his indiscretion, he truly hadn't meant to stare; but all that comes out is a mumbled croak of "sorry."

"Can you get to your feet?" the woman asks.

"I'll...try," the words come a little easier this time, for which he is grateful, but he can't yet bring himself to meet the eyes of the person who seems to be helping him.

Siegfried stares down, studiously avoiding any other inappropriate body parts, as the woman's arms come under him and haul him upwards. He scrambles to get his legs under him, but they are still as uncooperative as before and it takes a great deal of effort to finally make it to standing. She is taking a great deal of his weight and he wonders at this, he cannot think of a woman who is that strong save for... and suddenly it all falls into place.

Finally he raises his head and looks to the side, and as expected he meets the cold, blue eyes of Isabella Valentine.

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Ivy dumps him further up the bank, under a slight overhang of rock and dirt, which provides enough shadow to take the edge off the oppressive summer heat. She then hunkers down across from him, reaching back without ever taking her eyes away, to bring the flask of water from her pack.

She takes a swig of the tepid water and pauses for a moment, eyeing the boy slumped against the bank, who is watching her with disturbingly blank eyes. Finally she extends the flask towards him, wordlessly offering the water.

He reaches forward, with hands that tremble when they wrap around the hard leather container, and brings it slowly to his mouth. He drinks all of it in slow, steady gulps, water trickling down his chin when he can't quite keep the flask steady. Eventually he drops his hands into his lap and his head falls back slightly as he gasps in air that has been denied while he drank.

"Feeling better?" Ivy asks, and the enquiry is less for his benefit than hers.

He nods, "yes, much, thank you." His voice sounds much better for the water too.

Ivy stares back at him with narrowed eyes and begins her interrogation. "What is your name, boy?"

His brow furrows. "You know who I am," he answers.

"I knew you as Nightmare, but as you are now? I rather doubt you are he, now answer my question."

"My name is Siegfried, Siegfried Schtauffen," he says, "and you, you are Isabella Valentine, I remember you."

Ivy frowns. "My name is Ivy, and you will not call me anything different, not here or anywhere else." The implications of her own words only come after they are uttered: that she is going to allow him to be 'anywhere else' once she is finished talking to him. She ignores the thought and asks him another question instead "How is it you remember me, if you are not_ him_?"

Siegfried thanks what little grace is granted him that she sees Siegfried and not Nightmare slumped weakly before her, but the answer to her question is not easily given. Finding words that will adequately explain his experience as the host of Soul Edge is painfully difficult.

It is only after a long silence that he finally speaks, "I remember all of the last three years," he tells her dully, "I watched it all happen, and I could do nothing."

His blank stare falls to his lap, where his fingers idly stroke the hard leather of the flask he still holds, his face a study of deep despair and self-loathing. His words stir something deep in Ivy's chest, feelings that she submerged to such a depth so that she wouldn't have to experience them. She does not want to experience them now, either, but hardening her heart as she has still never prevented Ivy from knowing the pain of her many victims.

She wants to hate him for it. For feeling what she feels, no matter how deep the emotions are buried; for knowing what she knows, for having lived through it too, and regretting it with all of his being, just as she does.

"I need the truth from you now," she tells him quietly and Siegfried's eyes come up to meet hers. "Tell me why my presence at your side was necessary. Why did you give life to my sword when all along I intended your destruction with it?"

Siegfried squirms under the intensity of her gaze. She is no longer making a distinction between he and Nightmare, and something in the way she speaks tells him this was the reason for her assistance all along. It tells him that once she is done, she will either leave or kill him helpless where he sits. He could refuse to give the answer she wants, and she may kill him anyway, and Siegfried almost doesn't care... But he owes the truth to her after all the deception; he owes a great deal to everyone, so he may as well start here.

"Soul Edge," he begins, "needs a host, a sword cannot kill without a hand to wield it no matter how powerful it's evil. When I first gained Soul Edge I wasn't strong enough to contain it and lost most of it's power, it has spent the time ever since then regaining what it had lost and it used me to do it. And in turn, Nightmare used you." Siegfried paused for a moment, looking down and licking his lips as he prepared to tell her the rest. "You though, you were special, you were better than me because Soul Edge made you. It is why Nightmare gave life to your sword, one more means of influence, to bring the power inside of you out. You were needed I think, because I believe had everything gone to plan with the summoning of souls then Soul Edge would have claimed you as it's host and I would be free; or more likely dead."

Siegfried isn't sure what reaction to expect from her, but Ivy suddenly leaping to her feet with a terrible cry, startles him. She backs away, sword pointed out at him as if to deny the words he has spoken, as if they are a threat against which she must defend or run away.

"No!" She half gasps, and her voice is ragged. "I will never! Never! Not for that abomination."

"I don't think you were ever intended to have a choice," Siegfried tells her softly.

He watches her entire body go rigid, and with the sword still held out she walks back towards him till the point is bare inches from his throat. "I kill you now and will it change things? Will that thing," and she nods to where Soul Edge still lies where it has fallen, battered and silent, "dwindle and fade to nothing should I remove it's host and leave it to rot?"

Siegfried just shrugs his answer. "Perhaps, perhaps not. It is an old evil that has survived centuries, I cannot tell you how to destroy it for certain. You may kill me but it may not solve your problem."

She stares down at him, clearly troubled. "You do not fear your death?" She asks softly.

"No," he answers her honestly, "but I do fear what lies beyond. I have done terrible things, Isabella, the hands were my own though I couldn't control them. I invited that evil inside my soul and many have paid dearly for it. I wish to live, if only to see that Soul Edge is brought to ruin."

She had intended to kill him from the moment he came into her sight, now Ivy is feeling not so sure of this. He knows more than anyone about the cursed sword and this could work in her favour. The fact that she is also feeling something akin to empathy is something she ignores.

Ivy lowers her sword and steps back. "Perhaps then," she says, "there maybe some collusion between us."

Siegfried's eyes narrow almost suspiciously as he gazes back up at her. "You are suggesting an alliance?"

"You want the sword gone, same as I, we combine our knowledge and this maybe possible. I will make my own destiny Siegfried Schtauffen, and it will not be to bow to the curse of my blood."

Ivy extends her hand down to him. "Do you believe you will be able to stand now?"

Siegfried reaches out and grasps it with barely any hesitation and once more is hauled to his feet. This time his legs obey and hold beneath him. "I believe I can," he says.

Ivy gives him a wry smile. "Then I hope you can walk too, as we have a long ways to travel before we reach a port that will take us back to England, and I only have one horse."

Siegfried is not looking forward to that, given the heat of the day and how weak he still actually feels.

Ivy looks back from where she is refilling the flask from the stream and gives him a critical once over. "Perhaps I will let you ride, though." She can't help but smirk at the visible relief on his face.

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They set out about twenty minutes later. Siegfried has abandoned his armour at Ivy's rather sensible suggestion and the battered blade that is Soul Edge has been wrapped in the remains of his cloak to hide it from the rest of the world. Though to anyone's eyes it would look nothing more impressive than an old zweihander that has seen better days and too many battles.

His gaze falls to the silver-haired woman who strides beside him at the horse's head, and for a moment Siegfried entertains the wild hope that they might succeed in their new mission, that a world without Soul Edge is not so far away, that he may find a way to atone for the atrocities of Nightmare. That one day he may even go home...

Ivy's resolve is set, she has pinned a great deal on the man behind her, but the sword she has spent so many years seeking is finally within her grasp and now all she needs is to find a way to destroy it. And what of herself? The question hangs constantly now in the back of her mind. She has told Siegfried she will make her own destiny, but her fate, whatever choice she makes, is now irrevocably linked to Soul Edge, and she now must contend with the thought that she might never be free.

No. She is Isabella Valentine and she is her father's daughter, she will find a way.


	2. Chapter 2

It is two weeks, and three days before Ivy finally arrives home with Siegfried in tow. The price of the war horse bought them passage across the German Sea from Amsterdam to Kent, and from there it has been a further boat ride up the Thames to where they now stand.

It is night time, so Siegfried can't see very much beyond the yellow glow of the single lantern Isabella is carrying, but what he can see shows a lonely jetty, leading a short distance to a roofed walkway with railings either side. To the left of it hulks the dark shape of a boathouse, to the right the walkway turns into a small pavilion, the rest beyond is clad in darkness.

"Come along, Siegfried," Isabella orders him with the same ease she has done so since she first found him. Her heels clunk hollowly on the wooden boards and he trails after her, shrugging the sword at his back into a more comfortable position.

She brings him to a stark halt though, when they come under cover of the pavilion. "Do not move," she whispers, and before he can ask why, she has brought finger and thumb to her mouth and let out a whistle so piercing that Siegfried flinches back, holding his ears.

Isabella's free hand instantly shoots out to grab him, stalling any further movement, and he realises that she was deadly serious in her demand. He sees why soon enough.

Darker shadows detach from the night and silently flow towards them. For a moment before they reach the pool of light spilling from the lantern, Siegfried wonders what demons she has employed to guard her home.

Dogs, it turns out. Or perhaps wolves, the resemblance doesn't bear much difference. There are three of them, small and shaggy with dark fur, and they sit obediently to attention as they come into the presence of their mistress.

Isabella squeezes his arm once more in warning to abide by her instructions and steps forward. She presents her hand to each animal in turn, and it is thoroughly sniffed and heartily licked with faint whimpers of approval from each. When all three dogs are appeased and sat relaxed, tongues lolling in contentment, only then does she turn back to him and beckon him forward.

"Present your hand as I did," she orders him softly, as he approaches her and the dog she stands beside. "Do nothing else and do not kneel down, they must know you and accept you as a superior before you will safely have run of the grounds"

Siegfried does as she tells him and watches as the first dog sniffs his hand and gives it a single lick before sitting back and smacking it's chops as if to savour the taste of him. "You have trained them to kill?" He murmurs as he moves to the second dog, Isabella at his side as he does so.

"Without hesitation, if the scent is not one they recognise."

Siegfried grunts his response, a sound ambivalent enough to mask the disapproval he feels.

Isabella seems to pick up on it, none-the-less. For someone who was so roundly fooled by his monstrous alter-ego for nearly a year, she is horribly perceptive of him. "I am away from home for great lengths of time," and he can hear the sharp edge in her voice despite it's softness. He hopes the dogs do not. "I have only the housekeeper and butler on retainer, I can't rely upon anyone else to protect this place while I am away. If anyone is foolish enough to trespass then it is on their own head."

She chooses not to look at him following her words, instead striding forward, dispersing the dogs before her and stepping from the pavilion and onto a gravelled path. The guardians of her house melt back into the night, beyond the pool of their one light, but Siegfried can sense them still, travelling with them as he hurriedly follows Isabella up the pathway, leading to her house.

It looms out of the darkness at them, a foreboding presence that seems to be a match for it's mistress. The gravel path widens out and then soon they are stepping up onto flags, and then climbing a set of steps that lead up to a wide front door.

Isabella passes him the lantern so she can dig the key out from the inside pocket of the pack she carries. The lock comes undone only with some effort but the thick oaken door swing open with barely a sound from the hinges. She ushers Siegfried quickly inside, taking one last, long look out into the night shrouded grounds before closing the door behind them and locking it again.

The darkness inside the house is even more profound than it is outside. Siegfried can only stand and wait as Isabella seeks out the lamps set along the walls and lights each one in turn from her lantern.

The new light reveals a cavernous hall. Two sets of stairs run up against the walls on either side, leading onto the gallery that runs round the first floor. Directly ahead at the other end of the hall is a massive fireplace, framed by the stair cases. The mantle is ornately carved wood, so old it looks to be black, and the wall directly above the fire bears what must be the family crest of the Valentines.

Siegfried stares at it for a moment and consciously reminds himself that woman who has brought him here is in fact a Countess, a member of the English aristocracy and not just a fierce warrior woman with an enchanted sword.

Isabella comes to stand beside him and looks up at her coat of arms. "Three black lion heads, on a white chevron against a black shield with red mantle. It has always been the lot of Valentine to serve the crown faithfully in war and peace. That ended with my father." With this she turns away.

Siegfried reads haltingly the Latin written above the helm, it has been a while since he has had to use this particular skill. "To ever strive and... increase?"

"More or less," she answers from behind him.

Suddenly he hears a door open somewhere above and footsteps come charging towards them from the left gallery. Siegfried looks up in the direction of the noise, hand automatically reaching for the sword at his back, and only at the last second does he clench his fist to prevent himself from drawing the Soul Edge.

A man, looking to be well into his sixties and skinny with age peers over the banister at him, a crossbow aimed directly at his chest.

"Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?" He demands furiously.

Siegfried only recognises about three words in the sentence that was spat at him, but the meaning is loud and clear. Desperately he looks to Isabella.

Ivy saunters over to him, heels clacking on the floor, in no real hurry to diffuse the situation.

"Master Beckett, this man is my guest, please kindly do not threaten him."

The old man recoils in surprise, then grins in delight at the woman staring up at him. "My Lady Isabella, oh finally you return, my good wife and I were despairing of you ever coming home!"

Ivy watches as he almost stumbles down the stairs in his haste to reach her, trying not wince as he narrowly misses firing the crossbow. Aware of his near miss, Beckett takes a great deal more care when he disarms the crossbow and lays it to one side against the wall, before bowing to his mistress.

The smile she gifts the man, her butler, is genuine and warm. "Well I am home now, and the journey has been a long one. I hate to rouse you in the middle of the night but could my room and one for my guest be prepared? I think a bath for each of us would be in order too," She looks towards Siegfried, wrinkling her nose. While she has done her best to wash regularly, the man she has travelled with smells particularly ripe, having ignored her constant admonitions for him to do likewise.

She has discovered that while Siegfried willingly allows her order him around without complaint, she has on occasion been pulled up short by some very subtle acts of rebellion. His refusal to bathe is one of them. The last three days trip up the Thames have been a constant battle against the temptation to push him into the river.

Siegfried looks back her guilelessly, quite honest in his ignorance of what she has said. While this is something Ivy thinks she would enjoy exploiting, attending to his education in the English language might be worth starting very soon.

Beckett is already making sounds of agreement; despite her order being couched as an honest request, he would never dream of actually refusing it. "I shall have Margaret make up the beds immediately, I will get the fires going in the bathroom myself."

"Do not concern yourself with hauling the water, I will have Siegfried make himself useful doing that," Ivy tells him.

Beckett glances swiftly toward the young man standing by fireplace, who is looking quite confused and not just a little worried. Beckett cannot blame the boy, really, for despite his great fondness for his mistress, he is quite well aware of how mercurial her moods can be. Quickly he goes back up the stairs to the room he shares with his wife, at least content in the knowledge that he can tell her the lady of the house is now home.

Ivy watches him go, before closing the remainder of the distance between herself and Siegfried. She wrinkles her nose once again as a whiff of his unwashed aroma manages to find it's way passed her nostrils. "You are having a bath," she tells him bluntly and this time in German. "No 'ifs' no 'buts', and if you refuse I will knock you out and wash you myself."

Siegfried's eyes widen at the threat, and he honestly isn't sure whether to be afraid or excited at the notion. It's clear that she isn't joking, however, and perhaps he ought to finally concede to this one demand, as even Siegfried has to admit that he's starting to smell like a midden heap. "No need for threats, my lady, I will bathe, as you say," he injects a hint of asperity into his acquiescence, Siegfried doesn't want her to think she has won this easily.

The house, he learns, has two bathing rooms on the ground floor of either wing, each with a large fireplace of width to accommodate two blazing fires and their attendant cauldrons. Most of the room is sectioned off into two further chambers, each containing a large wooden tub that actually seem to be plumbed in. This would have been more impressive to Siegfried if the pump for the water, he discovers, wasn't in the kitchen.

When Isabella assigns him to haul the water to the distant most bathroom, Siegfried doesn't quite believe her when she explains the nearer one that shares the same wing as the kitchen has fallen into disrepair and she has never found need to fix it.

By the time the cauldrons are filled and the fires are burning merrily, Siegfried decides he is quite looking forward to his soak. He cannot remember the last time he experienced hot water, and the feel of it against this skin. It was a long, long time ago, he thinks, when he was still home, living with his mother.

Beckett appears again to offload a bathsheet and a lump of what he calls 'soap.' "For washing with," the butler explains, helpfully, when Siegfried stares at it curiously. Except of course, Siegfried didn't understand him.

"What?" he asks.

"He said that it's for scrubbing your stinking hide with," Isabella announces as she sweeps in and Beckett makes himself useful filling the first of the baths. She has taken time to change while Siegfried laboured with the water and now wears a heavy brocade robe, belted tightly about the waist. She is also carrying a bathsheet and several other items that Siegfried can only imagine she plans to use while bathing. "Please ensure you use it," she continues, "as I will be able to tell."

"I had no idea you liked me that much, do you plan to share my bath, just to make sure?" Siegfried snidely asks.

Isabella sneers at him, "You know very well I can smell you from here, believe me it will take more than hot water to relieve you of that stench!"

"Oh, you wound me," Siegfried monotones in reply, rolling his eyes.

Ivy eyes the boy momentarily at this. This is the most Siegfried has even spoken back to her, usually all she gets for her brusque demands and sharp digs is a slightly sardonic "as you say, my lady."

This is new; perhaps he is going to start displaying some backbone in their interactions. Ivy isn't sure whether to pleased or annoyed at this. While having him around could make her life a little more interesting, he could quickly make of himself an irritant, especially if he proved useless when it came to the whole point of their alliance.

Despite many attempts, Siegfried would not be drawn on discussing the Soul Edge with her during any part of their journey. It proved itself to be very frustrating, leaving Ivy to suspect that what he disclosed to her during their first meeting was in fact the sum of his knowledge. She plays idly with the idea of beheading him should this actually prove to be the case. It would be no loss to her either way, and would leave her feeling quite vindicated.

Siegfried is shuffling his feet in front of her, staring quite fixedly at the ground, and Ivy suddenly realises she's been glaring at him all the while she has been thinking. Well, perhaps it would remind him of his place, here, she thinks. He lives only at her sufferance, and now he is in her house. He will bloody well do as he is told.

Magnanimously, she allows him to take the first filled bath. If only, she tells herself, so she can be sure he won't just give himself a quick dip and sneak off to stink out her house. If he should ever manage that, she'll leave him to sleep outside with the dogs...

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Siegfried settles back into the warm water, and admits quietly, that yes, perhaps bathing is a good thing. All his muscles have ached from the moment he woke to sanity, and he has managed mostly to put the discomfort from his mind, but the soothing heat brings it all back to the fore. He wonders if there is any strength in the old butler that he can persuade the man to give his shoulder muscles, at least, a good pummelling. He rather doubts Isabella would oblige, not without indulging in his pain a bit first.

She still feels like an enigma to him. In his younger days, Siegfried prided himself in his abilities when it came to dealing with the fairer sex, but while Isabella is indeed very fair, she is unlike any other woman he has ever met. Everything about her, thoughts, words and actions, seem calculated... yet he has caught her off guard several times, like just before, and then her gaze upon him is a different kind of considering.

He wonders what she is seeing then.

It's also the reason he has been loath to speak with her about the sword. She speaks of collusion while he said alliance. One does not stab one's allies in the back, but to collude provides no such assurance. He quite simply doesn't trust her yet.

Siegfried stares at the still-wrapped sword, propped up in a corner of the bathroom. It hasn't stirred once since he has woken, but occasionally he has come awake in the night since then, stirred from his sleep by terrors in the void.

He told the truth when he said he wasn't afraid to die, and that still holds now. What he fears more than anything is going to his grave with the blood of thousands on his hands and no means to show for grace. He has prayed so long in the depths of soul, when the depths were all that was left to him. He prayed to all the saints he could think of, to the Lady and to the Christos; prayed for a chance to be free and redeem himself for his sins. He is willing to suffer, but he will not suffer death, not yet.

He doesn't trust Isabella not to take his life if she decides in her whimsy or in her calculations that it is necessary. While she needs him, he holds some power, and without any other weapon right now it's the only power he has.

* * *

A/N The coat of arms described is in fact the Valentine family crest, though the motto I attributed to it isn't, but I figured that there at least should be one.


	3. Chapter 3

Ivy occasionally wonders how it is she hasn't killed Siegfried before now. Now being one such instance, as she watches him storm from her library; the room shakes briefly as he slams the door behind him.

The boy really needs thicker skin, she reflects.

Undaunted and unwilling to let the former host of Soul Edge distract her from her work, Ivy turns back to the book on the table before her. It is a bit of a rarity in her collection – or perhaps more accurately her father's collection since it was he who amassed most of her library – in that it holds a very precise description of the cursed sword along with a treatise on it's history and attendant mythologies. That alone makes the book priceless; but as it is one book, and one alone, Ivy cannot help but also take a great deal of it's content with some caution. Having Siegfried here, however, has allowed her the opportunity to cross reference the contents against his first hand knowledge.

Siegfried had been quite game at first, and Ivy was able to establish that the description of the sword was fairly accurate, and that the various contradictions of this description further into the text about what kind of weapon it resembled were also upheld.

Soul Edge, according to Siegfried, changed it's shape to accommodate it's wielder, which would explain why history had such a hard time keeping track of it. However, even Siegfried shrugged helplessly at the part claiming that Fenris of Norse legend was a metaphor for the cursed sword. Comparing the soul devouring blade to a ravenous wolf might be appropriate, she reflects, but surely that was stretching it too far? Also, since there seemed to be no discernible explanation for what the Aesir had managed to bind the wolf with, it seemed like one to dismiss.

It was only when Ivy had started pushing Siegfried for more detailed information on how Soul Edge had bound Siegfried as it's host that she hit a brick wall. The sword lost a great deal of power when Siegfried first took it up, did he know that this was what caused the terrible fall of what became know as the Evil Seed, or variously the Devil's Rainfall? Siegfried had squirmed, before admitting that he knew something had happened, had perhaps associated it with his taking up of Soul Edge at the time, but hadn't really accepted it till sometime later. When Ivy had asked him to clarify when sometime later was, and why then, Siegfried couldn't answer. Or wouldn't, Ivy suspects, as when she had tried a different tact of questioning, Siegfried had clammed up altogether.

Finally Ivy lost her temper with him - heavens knew she had been patient beyond her natural capacity - and demanded the information she was asking, or what use was he? He had to stop hiding from the reality of what he had done or else they would get nowhere in this!

Siegfried had yelled back that she didn't know what she was asking of him, and had then stormed from the room...

Pathetic, Ivy thinks, with some relish, as she stares down at the open book with a grimace. Then sighs a little wistfully; if only she could get into his skull, into his soul, she could find what she needed to know. It's a shame such a feat isn't possible – and it isn't despite her alchemical skills and her modest ability with sorcery.

Useless boy, the next thought spits bitterly. What does he know of suffering, or guilt? He didn't slaughter his way across a third of Europe, the damned sword did that.

She has, though; taking the lives of so many she lost count, only to find herself fooled by the very thing she sought to destroy; she helped it, it had intended that she _become_ it, the bastard thing had made her so that she could...

For a moment the world tilts, sickeningly, and Ivy grips the edge of the table with desperate fingers to keep herself upright. Commands her roiling stomach to obey and not spill it's contents from the strength of her sudden horror and self-loathing.

What does he know? She thinks bitterly as she clings to composure and does everything she can to prevent herself from collapsing into a quivering heap. It is her stubborn pride that keeps her standing. She is the Countess Valentine and she falls to her knees for no one and nothing.

The rush of emotion finally passes, and she finds herself still standing, though her legs tremble like a newborn foal's. Ivy stares down at the book again; rifles through the thick leaves almost aimlessly in an attempt to bring something to her attention that would be a worthy distraction, but she reaches the back cover without finding it.

She sighs again, and her shoulders slump. The bastard isn't even in the room and still he has managed to turn her from her work. The irritation it brings is almost enough to offset the anticipation of his usefulness to her and makes her think about killing him again...

No. She won't kill him, Ivy decides, but smacking him around a bit with the Ivy Blade would definitely make her feel better.

The thought makes her smile.

___________________________________

Siegfried wonders how it is he hasn't yet strangled Isabella Valentine, as he stalks out into the gardens at the back of the house, starting down across the lawn toward the river bank. He deliberately ignores the tidy, gravel footpaths to tromp heavily over the wet grass, feeling the earth squelch beneath his feet. He does it to annoy her; because he can and because he feels the need to disrupt the order of her home, one that is swiftly becoming like another prison.

He _is_ grateful, he admits, when he finally slumps down on the hard, wooden boards of the pavilion, head pressed against the railings as he stares out at the river. He is very grateful for the food in his belly, the clothes on his back and the soft bed at night. Yet it seems she goes out of her way to make his life difficult in every other respect; the last two weeks for him have been a exercise in restraint on his part, as she poked and prodded and needled, but even his deep apathy towards his own suffering is starting to protest at the treatment.

He wonders if she has been trying to provoke a response from him, or if it's just an aspect of her charming personality. He recalls, when he dares to think back – and it isn't often because every part of him flinches away – a sharp edged tongue, and words few spoken but often laced with bile and bitterness. She cared little for her companions, even for her master, but she had a debt to pay and she would honour it.

Well today it seems he has had enough of it, and Siegfried resolves not to speak with her or even remain in her presence unless it becomes strictly necessary. A small part of him wonders, though, how long he will be able to maintain this resolve. He has no doubts that it will probably incite Isabella to physical violence against him; though she has yet to raise hand or sword to him since that first meeting when he woke, it is terribly easy to provoke her ire and this time he will be seeking to do so. That itself doesn't bother him, he can hold his own against the woman now that his health is returned to him. He worries more about how stubborn she will be if she decides to play against him rather than resolve their issues with each other.

Siegfried stares out at the river, watching without really seeing as the barges float passed, dwarfed by the occasional galley. The rain begins to fall again, with a soft patter, and the scent of wet grass and greenery floats up once more, pushing through the slightly sour odour coming from the Thames. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply. The air is fresh and alive... and so is he, he reminds himself.

Still, apathy folds it arms around him once more and draws him into it's sweet embrace. Siegfried opens his eyes and tries to take in the world around him, so that it matters. I'm alive, he thinks, and I have a duty to perform, whatever she says, whatever she does, I can't let it get in the way of that.

He considers his resolution, which is barely minutes old and discards it. He should not allow himself to be drawn into petty feuds with Isabella, she can be angry with him all she wants but he will not let it touch him, there are greater things to consider than his own comfort. Siegfried reprimands himself for almost losing sight of that.

That isn't to say he will continue to allow her behaviour towards him. He will give her whatever information she desires, he decides, but only if she can prove to him the necessity of it. While he will not let his own comfort get in the way of what needs to be done, he will not allow the same of her either. He deserves her scorn and anger, Siegfried will never deny that, but only once the sword is dealt with will they both have the luxury of dealing with each other as their emotions see fit, and until then...

Siegfried clenches the fist of his right hand, then flexes it out again, mentally counting the fingers to ensure he still sees five and that there is human flesh in place of muddy, leathery skin.

Still alive, still human, this day still a chance to bring Soul Edge closer to it's doom. He should go back inside and make peace with Isabella so he can make the most of that chance. But the rain falls heavier now, blurring the black and white building behind a watery veil, and it's quiet here and there is some small peace to be found in his solitude. Siegfried will stay till the rain lets up and then he'll return to the house to deal once more with it's angry mistress.

___________________________________

Isabella is nowhere to found by the time he returns to the mansion, and while part of him is a little relieved at that, he does wonder where she has gotten to. If he has learned anything in his time here, it is that the library and the laboratory are her native habitat and if she cannot be found in one then she is likely to be in the other. However, one is empty and the other locked, a swift check of said lock reveals the key is absent and therefore she isn't inside.

At a loss at what to do next, he wanders around the downstairs, entering quiet, empty rooms that hold little but dust. Siegfried thinks about what this place must have looked like when the family that lived here was in it's prime, affluent and celebrated, their company and influence highly sort after. Now Valentine is reduced to one, lone scion and she has dispensed with all of that 'vulgarity' as she scornfully referred to it as. He wonders if Isabella cares more than she will ever let on about the downfall of her family. She has told him, as though in passing, that it was an obsession with Soul Edge that drove the old man he sees in the portrait above the parlour door to madness and death, his wife quickly following apace.

There are a plentiful number of similar portraits, gracing the walls of the house, showing a record of the ancestral line of Valentine, or so Siegfried can assume. There is one particular picture that draws him, though, in the dining room, and when he sits to eat there with Isabella, it is a trial to prevent his gaze from swinging between her and the painting in constant comparison.

It is a family portrait and one that has to be a good many years old as Isabella looks incredibly young, a maiden barely out of adolescence. However, the painting hides nothing of the fact that even at a young age her body holds the curves of the woman she will become and her direct, blue gaze stares out challengingly, showing that even then she was confident in her own mind.

It holds nothing of the future though; the painter was skilled enough to capture that confident, forceful nature, but there is nothing there of the cruelty, anger and bitterness that he knows so intimately. Siegfried thinks of himself as he was at that age too, remembers a boy so full of himself, with a belief that he knew all that the world had to offer, and so eager to take by force if necessary what it would not freely give.

It seems a very long time ago; a different life even; that boy and this man two completely different people. This man murdered, however unintentionally, his own father. That boy, perhaps may have come to learn better. He wishes that boy had...

Siegfried pulls himself away from those thoughts with an effort. The past is unchangeable, what is done is irrevocably done and there is no use dwelling, or else he will never move forwards to make amends.

Siegfried wanders the whole of the ground floor and finds no sign of Isabella, so in a slight daze and feeling almost lost he finds his way to the kitchen, drawn by nothing more than the scent of fresh bread baking and the gentle ache it engenders of home. Margaret, the housekeeper and William Beckett's wife is happily ensconced, bustling about the long, low-ceilinged room as she goes about preparing for dinner. Siegfried belatedly realises how long he must have been idling for it to be that time of day already, and feels a slight stab of guilt that the day itself is almost gone and he is no further forward in his mission than before.

"Oh good afternoon, my pet," Mistress Beckett clucks as she looks to see him standing in the doorway. "Ay now, there's a melancholy face if ever I saw one. What's the matter my sweeting?"

Siegfried blinks at her. She lost him completely after 'good afternoon.' Still he makes the effort to respond: "Guten...um, good afternoon, Fra-Mistress Beckett." He stumbles a little, his grasp of English is still very new, though he is learning.

Mistress Beckett seems to have realised her error immediately though and while he is fumbling a greeting she puts actions to her words, worrying like a mother hen as she pulls him gently into the kitchen to sit him down at the large wooden table. A mug of warm cider is pushed into his hands and Siegfried drinks gratefully to ease the chill of the summer rain still damp upon his clothing.

Mistress Beckett's callused fingers pluck critically at the shoulder of his shirt as he drinks. "I really ought to have this shirt off you so I can take out the shoulders."

Siegfried shrugs uncomfortably underneath her hands, the material is very tight across his back and shoulders. The shirt, like all the clothing he has worn since his arrival, once belonged to old Count Valentine, but while the old man's girth allows a fit across the chest, his shoulders and back lacked the huge, defined muscles that Siegfried has cultivated in order to wield a blade the size of a zweihander. The breeches on the other hand are embarrassingly baggy and only the wide belt at his waist holds them up. Coupled with fine hose and the boots he wears beneath his usual armour greaves, he cuts a vaguely ridiculous sight. Not that anyone outside the house would happen to see him; according to Isabella, Siegfried is the first guest she had entertained in some time.

He hears Mistress Beckett tut some more from behind him, before finally releasing the shirt. "If milady doesn't order the tailor in here soon, I shall do so myself! How she can expect you to wonder around in these ill fitting underclothes is beyond me!" Clearly she is dissatisfied with his state of dress. Not that Siegfried is feeling particularly concerned about it himself, though he does quietly confess to himself that he would certainly appreciate it if what he does have to wear would fit him properly.

For now, though, he is content to watch the plump, elderly lady, bustle round her kitchen, setting a pheasant on the spit and chopping vegetables for the pot, before she sets to making the sauce for the game. It's only then she address Siegfried again, and this time with effort to see that he understands. "Siegfried, would you find Lady Isabella for dinner?"

Sure enough Siegfried is able to understand the gist of the sentence and nods in acceptance, he can only put off facing her for so long, and he had been looking for her in the first place when he came down here.

Margaret watches the boy trudge from the kitchen and feels her heart go out to him as it has on many occasions previous. He looks so often like a lost little lamb; his face and eyes haunted by some terrible occurrence in his past that she can only guess at. She doesn't know why Lady Isabella brought him home with her, but she has seen plentifully enough that her mistress is never kind to him, and yet he seems to accept it with quiet dignity. Margaret wonders what more she might discover of this strange young man, once his grasp of English improves and she is able to speak with him. In the meantime, she will press milady about ordering the tailor, if nothing else, she huffs, he ought to be dressed with some human decency.

___________________________________

Ivy covers her nose and mouth with one hand while waving the other before her, dispersing the dust cloud that exploded into the air when she dragged the great trunk from it's resting place inside a closet. The closet itself is behind an unobtrusive door in her bedroom, hidden in the dark wood panelling of the wall.

It has been many years since Ivy last looked inside this trunk, and it is evidenced by the amount of dust that has accumulated on top of it. Ivy eventually gives in to the dust cloud and sneezes several times, but finally it settles, and she sets the key to the lock and opens the lid.

There are a great many things inside, but she is looking for one thing in particular, inspired as she was when she sought to distract herself from the thoughts that had threatened to overwhelm her earlier today.

She finds tiny, lace gloves from when she was a toddler; an exquisitely crafted doll with a face of china and dressed in silk; a shawl that had been embroidered by her mother and gifted to her on her twelfth birthday, for this she stops a moment to bring the fabric to her nose and inhale the faintest echo of the perfume her mother wore, her eyes sting as she folds it back into the trunk. As each keepsake comes to hand she entertains the brief memory it brings before finally finding what she is looking for.

The book is small, barely larger than the hand that holds it, bound in soft black leather. Ivy opens the cover and reads the note written in neat copperplate on the first page:

**_This is the Diary of Isabella Valentine._**

**_Do not read if you value your eyes._**

Ivy stifles a laugh; even her young self was not afraid to issue threats of violence to protect what was hers. The book had been a gift along with the shawl, tokens of womanhood her mother had said, for now her monthly flow had come that was what she was. The book was to keep her thoughts and feelings over the coming years when she found she could not share them with others, the shawl was meant to comfort her during pregnancy and to swaddle her first-born, for a mother may not always be with her daughter during that time.

Ivy remembers how doubtful she had been at the time, especially over the shawl, and the worrying thought had entered her head that perhaps her mother was already entertaining ideas of marrying her off, especially as she would be making her Début the following spring.

Her mother had been quite horrified, however, when Ivy had timidly approached her about it, resolved as she was to put her foot down over the issue. Dear Lord, no! Was the very reassuring response. If anything, her mother had confided, she was mortally afraid her child would agree to the suit of the first boy she fell for and she would have to break her daughter's heart by refusing the marriage.

Both of them had left that conversation heartily relieved. Young Isabella had no interest in boys, and couldn't ever see that changing. A bitter smile twists full, adult lips as she contemplates the book in her hand; oh but that did change, alright, everything changed and every word within the leather-bound volume a detailed record of it.

Setting the book in her lap, Ivy closes the trunk and pushes it back into place against the wall of the closet. Rising with it once more in hand, she thinks again on what brought her up here, to dig out her past.

The woman in red who confronted her as she sought to flee Ostrheinsburg had known what she was without even knowing her name. The words she had spoken, clipped and heavily accented as they were, still ring with perfect recall in her memory.

"_That is not the cursed sword," The woman standing over her says flatly._

_Ivy struggles upright, calling her sword together to lean heavily against it as she stares blearily up at the shadowy red figure. Whatever the woman hit her with, it wasn't a physical weapon, but the blow is profoundly felt all the same, as if she has been knocked down by a runaway horse._

"_What are you saying, of course my sword is not cursed," Ivy returns, wondering all the while why she is having this conversation and not lying dead. This woman is supernaturally quick and has sorcery, Ivy knows when she is outclassed, though she'll never admit it aloud._

_The woman appraises her with cool, brown eyes, then says the words that change her life. "No. Your sword is not cursed. It is you. You reek of it. You are like _him._ You could be his child."_

"_Who is 'he'? Who's child am I?" She demands, with a strange and almost fearful hope that this woman might give her an answer to the question she never thought she cared to ask._

"_The monster they call Cervantes." _

_The words fall flat, without any sound of import for such a terrible pronouncement and for a moment there is blank silence, the seconds it takes for it to sink in before..._

"_What! You lie! That cur is not my father!" But Ivy's rage echoes to the empty walls, even as she lunges forward with a strength fed by her anger, for the crimson shadow has vanished before her eyes. Ivy sprawls to the floor as her reaching hands meet thin air; she lays there for some time, her strength all but gone, blood seeping from a multitude of small wounds and soaking into the dusty floor. _

"_You lie, he is not my father, he's not..." If she whispers the words enough perhaps they will eventually become true._

Ivy shakes off the remembrance, resolving as she does with each recollection to not let it haunt her, but the words always linger..._ "You are like him. You could be his child." _She clenches her fists, I am nothing like him, nothing at all! Then she looks down at the book, lying on the bedspread where she dropped it as the memory took her and reminds herself that this is why she got it out.

What the Asian woman had told her, what Siegfried confirmed, her blood is cursed with the malign power of Soul Edge and with the bloody thing dead or else dormant, it is her and her alone that now feeds the life-force of her Ivy Blade. That fact is inescapable; but she wonders how far back the influence of that curse stretches. She thinks perhaps it is too too much of a coincidence that her father should lose his sanity in pursuit of the very blade that managed to spawn the child he took into this household as his own daughter.

She had asked Siegfried earlier that afternoon why it had been 'sometime later', when he came to accept the link between his taking up of Soul Edge and the fall of the Evil Seed. Siegfried had refused to answer and still the irritation at his refusal bites, so perhaps it is only to prove herself better than him that she puts such a question to herself, while still reeling from the wave of emotion that had nearly overwhelmed her.

Was she, by her very nature, responsible for the downfall of her family? And when, when did she know that she was something different? Ivy had the rather uneasy feeling that she had known, in some way, rather early on. She had accepted the words of the shadow woman at face value, when she clearly had no reason to; she was exhausted at the time, yes, but certainly not so as to make her irrational. Yet the woman's announcement had rung like a pure-tone, glass bell in her soul, everything inside her had said 'yes', had sighed and relaxed as if with that one epiphany had set right her place in the universe. The answer to a question she never thought she cared to ask.

So something inside herself knew; knew that she was different in some way, not right, not...human?

Ivy drops down onto the bed beside the book and picks it up. Start at the beginning; the earliest record of her memories, from the time she was twelve to the time she was sixteen. She has other diaries from after that time, but sixteen was when things were irrevocably changed in the Valentine household; the diaries written after that time were penned by an embittered, disillusioned young woman and not the maiden she had been. This one she had put away with the rest of her childish things with all their shattered hopes and dreams.

Ivy spends the rest of the afternoon thus enthralled by the ramblings of her younger self; it makes for depressing reading, when she knows far too well what will be to come. There is nothing, though, nothing she can see that might be taken for the subtle, malevolent influence of the evil sword. The girl in this book is happy, for the most part; of course she has all the worries of a young girl making her way into Society and often she rants that the menfolk never want to take her seriously when she tries to converse with them intellectually.

Only her father, it seems, was ever content to do that. Her father whom she adores, who brought in tutors to teach her Latin and French, maths and science, law and politics, anything she asks to feed her hungry mind; the father who taught her to duel with short sword and rapier despite her mother's objection.

**_If I could marry anyone, I would have a man like Father, but I sincerely doubt there is another man like him in the whole world. I guess this means I shall not marry.._**.

Ivy nearly stuffs her hand in her mouth to stifle the very unladylike snort of ironic laughter that comes at that statement. The rush of tears that comes on the heels of it startles her though, and she snaps the book shut and wipes furiously at her eyes, chiding herself all the while for her foolishness.

Deliberately, she clears her mind and stares down at her feet; perhaps she has thought too much on this for one day, she will continue this exercise another time.

Ivy doesn't know how long she sits there before she is disturbed by a timid knock on the bedroom door. Frowning, she calls for them to enter, neither of the Becketts would deliver so gentle a rap to the wood, which must mean...

Siegfried opens the door and stands in the doorway not quite shuffling his feet. Of course this is the first time he has had sight of her bedroom and he doesn't know quite where to set his eyes so as to be polite.

"Well," Ivy snaps, "what is it?"

His head snaps towards her to meet her gaze directly, and she isn't sure whether she is pleased at the fact that he doesn't flinch away. He clears his throat a little before speaking though, and that almost ruins the affect of quiet confidence. "Mistress Beckett sent me to call you for dinner, it will be ready soon. I apologise if I unduly disturbed you."

Ivy jumps up from the bed, "well you didn't," she tells him quickly. She isn't about to let him wonder what she was doing just sat upon her bed as though awaiting the world to end. "I was just about to get up anyway."

Siegfried doesn't question her, just silently steps back to let her out the door before closing it behind him. He follows her down the stairs without a word, but she doesn't feel any glowering animosity from him, which she would happily anticipate given their altercation earlier today. But there is nothing, he seems to have gotten over it as swiftly as she has. Ivy suspects that he has probably spent all afternoon doing the same as she, though from the look of him he seems to have found whatever conclusion he was searching for.

She hasn't, and Ivy finds something more to be irritated at Siegfried about. He is not allowed to have the upper hand. Well let him believe he has, she contents herself with thinking, and she will be sure to disabuse him of the notion at the earliest opportunity. He still hasn't answered her questions and she is quite determined that he will. Besides, she had made a promise to herself regarding Siegfried and a sound thrashing, and that she most definitely intends to keep!

* * *

**A/N Dear Lord this chapter was a chore! Unfortunately Siegfried and Ivy weren't talking to each, and thus not talking to me either, but I finally managed to torture some introspection out of them! Sorry about the wait.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Oh dear lord _the trauma!!_ Wrestling with Ivy and her temper is not fun, I can tell you! All it needed was mud! Which maybe Siegfried would have enjoyed had he not been cowering under the table... Anyway, it's finally here, Chapter 4. Now I must go away and find a way for me and poor Siggy to survive Chapter 5, I shall see you all in a month.**

* * *

The shirt is white cotton and of a weave so fine it feels like the kiss of rose petals against his skin. The best part though is that it fits across his shoulders and does not pull uncomfortably at the cuffs when he stretches. The breeches are coarser but still fine, and cinches at his narrow waist without recourse to the massive belt he has previously used. The black leather jerkin that finishes the ensemble is simple but well made and as Siegfried stares at his new reflection he feels the barest flicker of his youthful pride at the dashing figure he makes. Perhaps he will not cut his hair after all.

"Oh yes," Margaret Beckett's satisfied pronouncement floats from behind him, "most definitely an improvement. He looks like a proper young man now." She nudges her husband settled next to her with a mindful elbow.

William clears his throat and sits up straighter – in all honesty he'd nearly fallen asleep as he waited on his wife, primping and preening the boy, before she pushed him toward the mirror and sat down beside him. "Indeed, most definitely," he agrees. And it is an honest agreement at that, he reflects; for nearly a month the young man has been idling about the house in an old man's cast-offs. Lady Isabella had finally given her consent to calling in the tailor just over a week ago and now the result is before him. William thinks that it is a good thing only he and Margaret remain from the staff or else he'd be warning off the maid-servants.

Siegfried turns and gives the two of them a hesitant smile. "Thank you, it is..._this is_...good." his English is still heavily accented but steadily improving.

Margaret's satisfied grin widens and she gives him a generous nod while shuffling contentedly in place, almost reminiscent of a fluffed up hen. "Well off you go then my lad, go impress her ladyship with the turnout, I can't imagine she should be sorry."

Siegfried's brow furrows at the woman's words, he gets the impression she is dismissing him but not for what purpose.

"You will find Lady Isabella in the Library," William helpfully supplies.

Siegfried finally nods in understanding, giving the two a brief, reserved smile before departing the room.

Lady Isabella is indeed to be found in the Library, and scribbling furious notes from the rather aged tome she is consulting.

Siegfried quietly lets himself in, padding as noiselessly as possible toward the long table that takes up space between the wall of shelves and the galleried windows opposite. He can just make out the silver cap of her hair at the far end of the table, between piled books and various equipment she has transferred from her lab to make use of while she reads.

He comes to a stop at the other end, and after a moment in which she doesn't acknowledge his approach he clears his throat to call her attention.

Her head comes up immediately at the sound, and there is the barest tension before she realises who it is present and she relaxes again. Isabella comes to her feet only briefly to give him what seems to be a very cursory once over before sinking back in to her chair. "Very good," she mutters, and that, it seems, is the extent of her approval of his improved attire.

Another moment passes before she looks up again to find Siegfried still standing. "For heaven's sake, sit down will you, this place is untidy enough without you loitering."

Siegfried quietly does as she says and sits himself down beside the nearest pile of books. He pauses only for a moment before reaching for the topmost volume.

"Not that one," the order floats from down the other end of the table and Siegfried snatches his hand back as though he were a child caught filching from the desert tray.

"There is one to the right of you, red cover, read that."

Siegfried looks as she directs and indeed there is book, several inches thick and bound in red leather. The title is embossed on the front cover. "'A Child's Book of Fairytales'?" He queries, doubtful, lip curling almost in contempt.

A sigh reaches his ears and he hears Isabella get to her feet, marching the length of the table till she stands opposite him. She reaches, almost flattening her body against the table top, to grasp the book and push it directly before him. Isabella glowers up at him, hand still pressed to the cover. "You wish to be able to read English, I suggest you start here. I did."

With that she is gone, back to her work, and dutifully, though with an internal sigh, Siegfried turns the pages to the start of the first tale.

It is definitely a child's primer, the words are few and simple, and sounding them in his head he can match them to the spoken words he has been taught. Of course, it would be easier to sound them out loud, but Siegfried hesitates from even whispering, mindful of the quiet scribbling from the other end of the table.

"You wish me to read it to you?" He finally asks, dryly.

"In English, Siegfried," she reminds him.

Siegfried presses his lips together and wills himself to patience. "Do you want... that I read this to you?"

"Better," she congratulates, "and yes, you may."

And this is how today will be, he thinks. It isn't the first where she has completely ignored him and any contribution he might make to the ongoing research into the destruction of Soul Edge; setting him, instead, to learning the words, conjugations and tenses he needs to know for speaking her language.

Since their last altercation several weeks back he cannot help but notice the difference in her conduct toward him. True to his own word, he had confronted her about it after dinner, quietly explaining that while he will help her in any way he can, and give her whatever information she asks, in return she will have to tell him why she needs it.

Isabella had stared back expressionlessly over the cleared plates and empty wine glasses, the silence following his words stretching into the realm of uncomfortable. Then without a word, she got to her feet and left the room.

Siegfried reflected that at least she hadn't lost her temper and this might possibly be considered a success. And so it seems, because she hasn't said anything to directly provoke him since. That said, she certainly hasn't shied from asking the uncomfortable questions, either, and has had without fail an explanation as to why she needs an answer from him.

Occasionally, Siegfried suspects that she is still playing him, but this time by the rules he himself has set.

He wonders now if listening to him stumble over the reading of a child's reading book amuses her and if it is to make up for the fact that he is no longer forced to dress in mismatched and ill-fitting clothes.

Siegfried glances at her out of the corner of his eyes, and wonders if Isabella is even listening...

__________________________

Ivy stares down at the notes she has just made then presses thumb and finger to the bridge of nose before massaging her eyes. Her thoughts on the text are chasing each other in circles; there is definitely something there to be had, but it seems frustratingly out of reach. To break a diamond requires a diamond, nothing else will do. Yet that old alchemist's dream of transmuting lead into gold, death into life, seems also to have relevance. Equals and opposite... something equal...and opposite.

If one wishes to break a cursed sword, then perhaps instead of a cursed sword with greater power as she had thought to make with her Ivy Blade, how about a holy sword, with equal power? Not destruction, but balance, equilibrium?

She hears Siegfried's voice, droning softly in the background; he has a...good voice. It is deep, soothing, and almost hypnotic to her ears and racing mind.

Ivy props her elbows upon the table, lacing her fingers together and resting her forehead against the support provided. What if destruction of the sword isn't possible? What if it is like a diamond, only able to be broken by nothing less than another diamond? And unless something stronger in nature can be found, there will always be a diamond left, singular, eternal and unbreakable.

She doesn't know. Certainly it seems everything she has tried so far has ended in failure. While proving it comes apart very easily, in a way that she finds eerily reminiscent of a cat shedding it's coat, nothing she does to the cursed sword seems to bring the metal back into the realm of nature. No matter it's state it is consistently, uniquely Soul Edge.

So, perhaps the only option left to her now is balance and equilibrium. Something opposite and equal that will hold it until that something stronger is found. Ivy doubts she has anything like that to be found in her home, nothing to match Soul Edge at full power most certainly. Though in it's present state there maybe something that could be done with what she does have and what she has in abundance is knowledge and a library of arcana to go with it. For now, perhaps sorcery will provide what alchemy has failed to.

Ivy rises from her chair once more and heads with purpose to the shelves standing against the far wall of the long room. The bookcases here are closed and also gated for good measure; a key releases each of these barriers and she runs a finger along the edge of the third shelf down till she finds what she is looking for. By the time she has returned to the table, Siegfried has stopped reading and is now watching her curiously, from his expression it's clear he is debating asking what she is up to.

Well he may as well know, she will be in need of his assistance if what she plans is to succeed. Once more she marches the length of the table to stop before him; she drops the two volumes onto the tabletop and looks at him look at her expectantly.

"I have come up with a solution," she announces and in German, his English is far too new to understand what she is about to explain and while it might amuse her to watch him struggle she hasn't the patience for it right now. "Dead as Soul Edge might be at the moment, I have regretfully had to come to the conclusion that its ultimate destruction is beyond the realms of science alone," Ivy glances down at the books she has brought.

"You speak of witchcraft," Siegfried says, and it isn't a question.

"Witchcraft?" Ivy scoffs. "Don't be ridiculous, this isn't a matter for potions and incantations. I speak of sorcery Siegfried, or have you so easily forgotten how my Ivy Blade came about?'

Siegfried visibly flinches at the reminder; pale cheeks flushing, he looks away from her, not quite squirming in his chair. Ivy does not feel like taking pity on him though, not now that she has also reminded herself of the role this boy has played in her life, whether he meant to or not.

"So what is it that you plan?" Siegfried finally asks, after an uncomfortable silence and still not looking at her.

"My plan is to make a prison for the sword, to bind it ultimately with its own power should it ever find its way back to life."

"You suspect its current state isn't permanent?"

Ivy stares at him with a look of utter frustration that he is only just realising this. "If Soul Edge were truly dead Siegfried, then why is the blasted thing still lying in my laboratory resisting all attempts to destroy it?!"

Siegfried doesn't answer her, unable or perhaps unwilling, his lips pressed together in a thin line and for a moment it is like his eyes are not even seeing her. Ivy begins to feel the frustration with him beginning to build further. She has suspected for a while now that he is deliberately claiming ignorance to some of the questions that she has asked him; most particularly questions that probe deep into his experience as Nightmare. Looking at him now, Ivy thinks that suspicion is beginning to feel vindicated. However, she once again curbs her usual first instinct: to strike out at him like a snake in the grass, in favour of the subtler approach she has been employing since he laid down the new rules to their interactions.

"Don't hide from me, Siegfried," she says softly, and his gaze is abruptly back on her again. "You promised me your assistance, and you have been generous," Ivy keeps her voice soft, coaxing. "So I can trust you not to withhold anything from me, can't I Siegfried?"

She sees him swallow audibly and she knows her suspicion is most definitely confirmed. "O-of course," he stutters.

It is an effort of will to suppress the surge of anger that rises up at him, and Ivy figures he must sense something of it as he is looking at her warily, body tensed for movement. She glances down at the books before picking them up once more, determinedly bringing her focus back to her original intention. This needed seeing to first, she would deal with the problem of Siegfried once it was done.

Ivy flicked her eyes back up at the German boy. "I must also have your trust in turn Siegfried, for especially what we are about to embark upon. I can't do this alone, but likewise I cannot take you into the circle unless I can rely upon you to do all that I ask without question. Can you do this?"

Siegfried considers for only a few, bare seconds before nodding firmly at her, his pride and conviction rising to the occasion just as Ivy thought it would. She holds his gaze for a long moment, long enough for him to start squirming and for the realisation to coalesce in her own mind that she can ask of him anything as long as it will not require him to delve into his own psyche.

"Are you ready?"

Siegfried rises from his chair in response.

"Then come with me."

__________________________

The ritual takes two days to construct, with Ivy working long into the first night and straight through the other. Another day is then spent in rehearsal, going over and over it till even Siegfried's seemingly never-ending patience finally runs out and he announces he is going to get some fresh air. She doesn't see him again till dinner, but Ivy is content to allow it for once; he had performed surprisingly well in the rehearsals and she feels quite confident that the ritual will go correctly and without complications.

"You may wish to retire early tonight," she advises him over the venison. "The correct planetary hour for starting the ritual will not fall till past two in the morning, and I would recommend being rested before it begins."

Siegfried nods in acknowledgement of her suggestion. "And do you plan to do the same?" He asks with far too knowing a look that says he is quite aware she hadn't been to bed the previous night.

Ivy purses her lips, glaring at his presumption. She bites her lip against a scathing response though, as she has to concede that he has a point. "Directly after dinner," she informs him stiffly.

Siegfried hides a smirk behind his wine goblet. The last few days have been... interesting. He'd never considered any kind of magic or mysticism before; even as a good Catholic boy it was all the province of the Church and not for him to even think about. What Isabella has introduced him to, though, is a fascinating, if somewhat intimidating, amalgamation of angels and demons, sigils and circles and triangles of art that all seem very complicated. It could be very dangerous, Isabella had told him, if you didn't know what you were doing.

There were times during the rehearsals, however, that she had fixed him with a speculative look that made him uneasy. It served to remind him of their conversation several days earlier in the library, when she had brought up the making of the Ivy Blade. It occurred to him then, that she might be aware of his internal struggle...

Siegfried glances up, cautiously, in Isabella's direction, and is relieved to see her concentrating on her meal. He hasn't dared mention the nightmares to her; that they are coming more frequently, that he worries it is something to do with the sword. Her words in the Library did nothing to put him at ease, and he is almost on the verge of confession: his sleepless nights; the inability to go inside himself to the place once claimed by Soul Edge, to tell her the secrets of the deadly sword; his fear that he maybe losing himself to it all over again.

He doesn't particularly want to turn in once dinner is finished with, either, but he climbs the stairs with her, bids her goodnight in return – an irony given that the sun still shines brightly through the myriad square panes of glass – and enters his room. Perhaps, he thinks, with dwindling hope, the light will keep the darkness inside at bay this time.

__________________________

When the knock comes on his door in the middle of the night, Siegfried is already awake and dressed, pacing the room with barely restrained impatience. He swiftly opens the door to face Isabella on the other side, holding up a lamp.

"Are you ready?" She asks.

Siegfried just nods his reply.

He follows her down the stairs and through the darkened house into her laboratory. He has only been in here a few times before; given his complete ignorance of pretty much all of what it contains this doesn't bother him. They come to a door concealed in the panelling of the room that Isabella quickly opens and ushers him through.

"I have already prepared everything we need to take with us," she tells him quietly, as she leads him down another set of steps that are narrow and steep. "I came to collect you last so we can be away immediately."

Siegfried puzzles over her words, are they leaving the house? It seems to him they are not, the stairs they are on are going down, but not at an angle that would take them from under the mansion.

"Where are we going?" He finally asks.

"Down to the river," she answers. "Though not all the way, the cellars don't extend quite that far; however, there is a passable tunnel that comes out in the boat house. I haven't used it in years though, so I can't quite vouch for that."

"I see," he replies.

"I doubt it," Isabella says with a touch of ironic humour to her voice. "It's pitch black down here, do not stray from me whatever you do or you may find yourself stranded."

The stairs finally end and he knows they must be quite deep underground now, the air smells of damp and dirt.

"This way," she beckons him, following a similarly narrow stone corridor with a low ceiling that Isabella would need to duck had she been wearing her usual heels. Briefly, he sees openings passing by on either side, some opening in to darkness, others into rubble. In the lamp light the stone work seems more reminiscent of an ancient keep than anything he has seen above ground.

"Did your family build this when they built the house?" Siegfried finally asks, giving into his curiosity.

"Not quite," she answers. "These were once buildings, sitting above ground centuries ago when the banks were lower. I believe they were Roman. My forebears discovered them as they were digging the foundations, and as is typical of House Valentine, made use of what they found by constructing cellars from them. As you can see, however, they have not seen much use in recent years, mostly I think due to the rising of the river. We are on the top most floor here, there were cellars lower than this but they are all flooded. It is there we are going now."

Sure enough, he can see light glowing from a distance, and quite quickly they are upon the lamp, sat at the top of another set of stairs that opens out on the right into a chamber. Siegfried picks up the light as he is directed and follows her down once more. They cannot have descended more than seven or eight steps before they come to water, and the boat.

Isabella pulls it round so the side comes up against the steps they stand on. "In you get," she orders him, and with great care Siegfried complies.

Isabella follows in after him, and reaches out to set the lamp she carries on the steps.

"Is that wise?" he asks. "What if it goes out?"

Isabella gives him one of her long, inscrutable looks, and he fears he has once more insulted her in some way. The venomous retort never comes, however, and truthfully it is beginning to worry him, as he hasn't been on the receiving end of one in some time now.

"Your concern would be well founded," she says instead, "However, it's not oil that is keeping either of the lamps we have here burning."

Siegfried double takes on that, before holding up the light he still carries to inspect it more carefully. Sure enough, in the centre of the glass casing there is light, but instead of a flickering flame, he sees what looks to be a stone, or fragment of glass, that is glowing quite intensely. It is held in some kind of apparatus within the lamp and he can only assume it is the product of alchemy.

"So you see," says Isabella, with no little self-satisfaction. "We are in no danger of running out of light. Just see that you don't drop it in the water, please."

With that she takes up the oars in the bottom of boat and begins to row. The water comes up high into the chamber, and after a moment they are forced to lie flat to the boat and use their hands to propel themselves beneath the lintel of a doorway and into another darkened room.

Siegfried watches as Isabella stows the oars again before carefully getting to her feet, bracing herself against the wall that is above the doorway they have just come through. "Pass me the lamp, Siegfried," she instructs him, and he does so.

He hears briefly the scrapping of metal on stone and suddenly he has to squeeze his eyes shut against the incredibly bright flare of light.

"Open your eyes, Siegfried," Isabella's amused voice floats from up above him.

He does so, and once he has managed to dispense with the spots clouding his vision so he can see properly, Siegfried's jaw drops.

They are outside the building they were previously in and it seems to have opened out into a vast marina. Except that there are colossal pieces of masonry jutting out of the water and leaping from the muddy walls, arcing high into the shadows above them. Siegfried tries to picture all of this once being on dry-land, how tall it must have been, but his imagination fails him.

"What...?" is the only word his hanging jaw seems capable of uttering.

"Magnificent, isn't it," and there is no disguising the pride in Isabella's voice, as though she were personally responsible for the grandeur laid out before him. "As far as I can determine, it used to be an amphitheatre, not unlike the Colosseum in Rome."

"Where's all the light coming from," Siegfried finally manages to speak. "Is it sorcery?"

Isabella laughs, a not completely unpleasant sound since she isn't actually sneering at him, "Good heavens no! Just a lamp and several precisely placed mirrors. Sorcery could never be used for something so mundane, and quite rightly, it's far too unreliable for such things."

Siegfried frowns at her words. "Yet you trust it will safely hold the Soul Edge."

"That is a quite a different matter," Isabella snaps, as she takes up the oars again and sculls them out into the underground lake. "Light is a thing found in nature. That sword, as I'm sure you'll agree, is not natural."

Siegfried has to concede her point. He does trust her, though, to know what she is doing.

She takes them to the far end of the cave, to a place concealed and partly raised up by a piece of the ubiquitous masonry. It creates a platform above the water, flat enough to stand on. Isabella gets out first and has him pass her the bundle of paraphernalia she had already stowed in the boat. Lastly he passes her the inert form of Soul Edge, still wrapped in the remains of his red cloak from the day she found him.

Siegfried knows well enough his part in what follows, and he goes through the motions he has learnt to the point of rote earlier that day. It's all somewhat underwhelming, really, when Isabella pronounces them done.

"Is that it?" He asks, just slightly concerned, because as far as he can tell nothing seems to have actually happened.

"Yes, that's it," she replies, before continuing scornfully. "What were you expecting Siegfried? Great flashes of lightning, a summoning of devils? It's done, believe me. I'm surprised you can't tell, given you were its host for so long."

Again, there is that penetrating look and Siegfried quickly averts his eyes from it. Instead, he stares at the sword, lying unwrapped on the cloak in the middle of a triangle, surrounded again by a circle and then again by a square, various symbols have been chalked in the spaces between and it looks like some child's drawing. He tries his best to sense something of the arcane power employed to create it, but there is nothing and he tells her so.

"Ah well," Isabella shrugs and starts packing away the equipment. "Sorcery is not the province of all, just something other that separates the gifted from the great unwashed masses."

"I had no idea you thought so highly of me," Siegfried replies with heavy irony.

Isabella raises an eyebrow at him as she settles herself back into the boat. "Not for a moment, Herr Schtauffen," she says in a soft tone laced with venom and a sneer curling one corner of her lips.

And with a single sentence she reminds him once more of his place in her world.

Siegfried sighs as he climbs back into the boat with her. Her reaction is almost comforting in way, he feels on surer ground when he is faced with her contempt; it makes dealing with her that much simpler when he is able to just let it roll of his back like a duck in water.

By the time they make it above ground again it is to find the sun having just edged it's way above the horizon. Siegfried squints into the light and suddenly feels a yawn rising in his chest. He is tired, he admits. He wonders, though, if he is tired enough that should he attempt to sleep would it be deep and dreamless?

"I will be turning in till the afternoon," Isabella announces. "I'd suggest the same for you, but if not... I request you try to keep yourself out of trouble."

He turns to look back at her, warily, something in the tone of her voice catching his attention. From the expression on her face though, his reaction was one she was waiting for; her mouth curves into an unpleasant, knowing smile that disturbs him greatly.

She knows, is the only thought that trips through his mind as they stare at each other. "No," he finally hears himself say. "I think some sleep would be a...good thing right now."

Without waiting on her response he swiftly leaves the Laboratory, feeling her eyes on his back till the door swings shut behind him. He does not stop till he reaches the safety of his room and leaning his head for a moment against the closed wooden panel of the door, he takes a deep breath in an attempt to compose himself.

She knows, he thinks, and she is going to want answers.


	5. Chapter 5

She dreams a dream full of long, distorted corridors that masquerade as her home, where she runs from room to room, desperately seeking a father that is long dead but not quite remembering this. She finds him eventually, the echo of her mother's laughter leading the way – and of course, her parents had been nigh inseparable so where else would she find him but with her... Except that when he turns it is a rotting corpse of a pirate, laughing as he beckons at her with twin swords.

"_Come to me, my chi-"_

_888_

Ivy comes awake suddenly, eyes forced wide open to stare up into the shadows of the bed canopy. It is nothing, she tells herself, just a haunting, a phantom in her mind, a residue of her attempts to process, accept and move on. She turns her head to the side table where a small black book sits exactly where she left it the night before. She will read it again; in there, there must be an answer, she will read it over and over, analyse the script till her brain goes numb, but she will find it and lay the dreams to rest.

Summers in England are routinely warm if damp; clear blue skies and warm sunshine that stretch on for calm, endless days, only for the rain to come and wash away all but a nostalgic memory of it.

The new day dawns brightly, the summer storm clouds swept away during the night to birth a glowing, blue sky and a sun that reflects in dazzling array off a rain drenched land. It is a fine morning, and full of promise; Ivy breaths in the clear air and raises her face to the burgeoning warmth. Oh yes, far too fine a morning to spend inside and her entire being itches for physical action. She has found little time so far to devote to combat practice; her usual, rather brutal, training regime has been tossed aside in favour of intensive study in her effort to find the ultimate demise for Soul Edge.

Well that will wait for now, she decides, she has put off the needs of her body far too long and today she will rectify this. Best of all she has what is possibly the most worthy opponent she will ever have chance to spar with lodging in her house, and she knows with some certainty that he will be just as grateful as she for the chance to stretch his fighting muscles.

Besides, she reminds herself grimly, there is also the small matter of what he has been hiding from her, vital information that she is fairly certain has hindered her research. Well there will most certainly be the opportunity to deal with that today, she has had enough of mollycoddling the boy and today he will learn to give her what she needs or else find himself in a world of pain.

Turning, Ivy heads back inside. The house is still, not even her Butler and Housekeeper are abroad just yet and Ivy quietly ignores the reason for her early rising. She heads into the library, and makes her way to the far end of the long room that is almost a gallery; there is door that is almost hidden in the back corner and it is through this she goes once it is unlocked.

The room is an odd shape, as if it were built to fit around the existing rooms and maintain the external shape of the house, which affectively it was, as it bound the south wing to the main, older part of the mansion. It is in here that is kept her father's most prized collection, more important to him in some ways than the many books and extraordinary array of alchemical apparatus. This room was her father's armoury, and since he is dead, it is now hers.

Count St John Valentine had been a skilled swordsman, and despite the oddity of a girl-child taking up arms, he had shown nothing but delight when his young daughter had expressed an interest in learning the art of duelling. While he had never been one to blow his own trumpet, Ivy's mother had imparted that her father had been quite feared as a young man, for his skills with both rapier and short sword and he had shown a keen interest in many of the various styles of combat found across Europe and Asia. Long before Count Valentine became an alchemist he had amassed for himself through the far reaching arms of his merchant enterprises a great and varied collection of swords.

Some of the weapons in the room were acquired for their strangeness, others because of their history. The chain sword, coiled artfully around a stand carved in the form of a dragon's head, that itself holds a chakram between it's wooden teeth, had been one of the inspirations for her Ivy Blade. While the very battered claymore, nestling in a cradle of pure white linen, had been sought out by her father for being the very blade wielded by Robert I of Scotland nearly three hundred years ago.

Ivy studies the claymore for some moments and the younger, more serviceable twin that lies below it. It is certainly long enough, though not nearly the length of a zweihander; if she can't find one of those in her father's collection, then at least the claymore will serve.

As it happens, there is a zweihander: beautifully ornate, of breathtaking workmanship and quite splendid. However, it is clearly ornamental and of no use to anyone as a weapon, so back to the claymore she goes.

Ivy sheaths the ridiculously long sword, though not before inspecting the blade for use; she can't recall offhand if her father ever tried his hand at wielding it, since at full length it comes up to her chest and would most definitely surpass that on both her father and Siegfried. There are a few nicks along the edges but nothing to show hard use and Ivy feels an amused anticipation at seeing how the German boy will handle something so huge in combat against her without the strength of Soul Edge to aid him.

Laying the claymore across her shoulder she makes her way back out of the armoury and then the library, careful not to bang the trailing blade on the door frames. She stops by her room to sling the baldric holding the Ivy Blade over her shoulder before approaching the guest room where Siegfried sleeps.

Without thought to his state of wakefulness or dress Ivy opens the door and sweeps inside; marching to the side of the bed she lowers the claymore point first to the floor with a loud, dull thud.

Siegfried, sprawled face down across the bed jumps quite satisfyingly from his sleep at the sound. His body, reacting before his mind has even woken, scrambles up and away from her, seeking to put the width of the bed between himself and the unknown, barely perceived threat.

Ivy grins widely at the sight of him, for it's now clear that he is quite naked beneath the sheets and his long, blond hair falls messily over his face, obscuring the eyes that strain, blearily to see what has woken him. "Good morning, Herr Schtauffen," she says pleasantly.

"Wha'?" is the incoherent response.

One hand pushes the hair from his face, and Siegfried stares in momentary confusion at the woman stood at the side of his bed, leaning casually against a long sword not a great deal shorter than she. There is wide, sly grin gracing her features and her gaze is so baldly leering that before anything else Siegfried considers his current position: that he is lying on his bed, quite naked and the single sheet he has covered himself with in deference to the season has barely preserved his modesty.

He snatches the sheet up without a word, pulling it tightly about his waist and then turning his back to her so she can't see his rapidly reddening complexion. "What are you doing in here?" Siegfried snaps.

"It's fairly obvious, I thought," and Isabella seems to make no effort to keep the smirk from her voice.

"Fairly obvious that you decided to amuse yourself by startling me from my sleep and satisfying some depraved urge to humiliate me."

"Well that part was certainly a bonus," and Isabella does not sound in the least apologetic or embarrassed, unlike Siegfried himself. "I am here with quite a different proposition for you, though, so don't get too excited."

"Meinedamme," and Siegfried's voice is so cold Ivy almost feels a physical chill. "I imagine there is little you could do to excite me in any way."

Ivy hisses through her teeth at the response, though she is more amused than insulted by it. "You've not even heard me out yet, I'm not standing here with this ridiculously huge sword for the good of my health you know. Dress yourself and meet me outside, I have plans for today that I am most certain you will enjoy despite yourself."

And with that Isabella is gone from the room, leaving Siegfried still flushed from embarrassment, quite annoyed and quite possibly somewhat aroused. Disconcerted at that, he stares down into his lap. She _is_ a woman, he reminds himself, and it's not exactly unusual for him to wake in this state early in the morning. He half wishes he'd had the presence of mind and the gall to have turned the tables on her. Siegfried wonders what would have happened to her smug reaction if she had found herself faced with an unapologetically naked and aroused young man intent on taking her presence in his room as an invitation.

Siegfried sniggers to himself as he rises from the bed, dropping the sheet and boldly strutting to where his clothing lay, daring her in his thoughts to come back into his room now. Oh he would probably feel the pain of it if he pressed such an intention, but it would be more than worth it to see the look on her face.

For a moment, as he pulls on his shirt, he reflects that he hasn't woken to the day counting the measure of his sins as he usually does. His apathy set aside in favour of irritation it seems. Perhaps this was Isabella's intention all along; he can't recall, now that he thinks of it, any time in the last two months of their association when her mood seemed so frivolous. In any event she seems quite determined to inflict it upon him, and he has little choice it seems than to go along with it.

He has to admit, though, that her apparent offer of combat practice is much more attractive than having to face her probing. It has been barely two days since they sealed away Soul Edge in the subterranean levels beneath the house, and while he truly does feel the exhaustion he has been using as an excuse to avoid her, he knows she'll only put up with it for so long before forcing a confrontation.

It occurs to Siegfried while pulling on his boots, that her 'plans' for today might just be exactly that; so it is with some foreboding that he opens the door of his room to go join her.

888

Ivy paces the terrace facing the front of her house, trying not to be too impatient about waiting on Siegfried. She has managed to school herself thus far but every part of her is itching at the promise of combat.

She has already checked on the enclosed menage, to ensure it's suitability as a sparring arena. It's packed dirt floor hasn't seen the hooves of a horse in years, just the heeled boots of her combat leathers in practice, now it would be put to a slightly different use. Hopefully it wouldn't sustain too much damage.

With practised ease she unsheathes Ivy Blade from the baldric at her back, feeling the reassuring weight of it in her hand and silently apologising to the sword for neglecting it so over the last month and a half. The now ever-present hum sings briefly inside her head, before settling back into it's gentle, constant monotone. Ivy tries not to feel guilty about how good it feels to be so connected to her beloved sword and the reason why this is so.

She makes a few experimental swipes to reacquaint herself, before effortlessly unleashing the whip to spin it's bladed segments around her in a complicated dance that ends with the cord drawing them all back into the sword with a snap.

"It's been a while since I've seen your sword dance, Isabella, I'd almost forgotten..."

Ivy spins around at Siegfried's voice behind her. "How many times, Siegfried, must I tell you to address me as Ivy!"

Always it is a demand, and perhaps if she should ever couch it as a genuine request Siegfried might one day comply. "One more time as always, Isabella; why is it you are so adamant of not using the name you were given?"

Her glare is as cold as ice, despite the warm day, all good humour gone from her. "Because you have not earned the right to use it; all you know of me is Ivy and that is all you will ever know. If you cannot bring yourself to remember that perhaps you ought to go back to saying nothing more than 'as you say, my lady.'"

A mocking smile draws Siegfried's mouth upwards and that in itself is almost disturbing, but he then bows and says in a tone equally as mocking, and this time in carefully enunciated English: "as you say, my lady."

The fury that grips her is something she hasn't felt since the day she first laid eyes on him, slumped unconscious in his armour months ago. All the pent up anger and frustration she has been holding against him, and herself, finally finding it's release at this most trivial of grievances. Ivy Blade shudders in her hand, the segments rattling as the cord loosens and tenses in response to her mood, then suddenly unfurling as her anger peaks.

"There is a sword in the menage, if you wish to survive this you best lay your hands on it quickly," she starts striding forward the sword-whip now whirling at her side.

Siegfried doesn't move at first, if anything a little dumbfounded by her reaction, unable to quite comprehend that he has managed to rile her into such a state; but then the whip lashes out and only reflexes from years of constant battle rolls him out of it's reach. Gaining his feet he backs away from her as she continues towards him.

"Run, Siegfried!" Ivy snarls and the whip comes at him again, this time snapping at his legs.

Siegfried does as she says and runs.

He makes it into the long building that is the menage several minutes ahead of her and casts about desperately for the weapon she said he would find there. The sound of her heels clicking on the flags draws closer but the song of the Ivy Blade is strangely silent. Siegfried suddenly spots the long sword she had been carrying earlier, leaning up against the bar that runs the width of one of the end walls.

Without hesitation he takes the blade in hand, hefts it to test the weight and the balance, before glancing back towards the open doorway.

The footsteps have stopped but Isabella is nowhere to be seen. Uneasy, Siegfried shifts his weight, listening carefully; then with great care to be silent he takes a step forward and to the left, while swinging the long sword he carries out with his right hand to drag it's point over the packed dirt.

Soil suddenly fountains up to his right and metal shrieks as it slides against metal. Siegfried spins toward the sound, using both hands to parry the bladed whip that has just erupted from the earth. He reels back putting enough distance between himself and the wall of the menage that it will take him out of range of the Ivy Blade.

Silence again, except this time he does hear her, a low, malevolent chuckle. How she is capable of moving so quietly in those boots he doesn't know. What he does know, however, is that she has now lost the element of surprise, she can't aim any more attacks beneath the ground at him, which means if she wishes to engage, she'll have to come through the door first.

Sure enough, Isabella saunters through a moment later, a smirk set to her lips and a mad light in her blue eyes that is far too familiar to him. Siegfried has never faced Ivy in battle, but Nightmare has witnessed her enough times to know how she fights, and as much as he loathes to, he reaches for that knowledge now. It's either that or risk being flayed by the razor edges of her sword.

It feels strange for him to be fighting without the weight of armour, the sword feels almost too light in his hands as a consequence because he doesn't need to compensate. He also feels a great deal more vulnerable for it too.

They pace around each other watchfully, appraising, measuring. Ivy reads his discomfort at facing her without his usual armour; Siegfried reads her caution, for now she has lost the initial advantage, she realises she is facing an unknown quantity. He sees the barely repressed excitement, and can hardly deny that he feels his own heart racing at the prospect of a good fight.

It brings back just a little of his youthful cockiness, and he straightens his stance, unconsciously displaying himself to invite her attack.

Isabella's smirk becomes a sneer, and she leaps on it instantly, and quite literally almost; the sword becomes whip and lashes out so fast he completely misses the transition. Siegfried's reflexes easily manage the block, but by then she is air-borne, the whip shooting out again in swift succession, and he feels the sting of metal as it cuts through the cotton shirt to slice into his left shoulder.

Siegfried reels back, recovers, and turns, bringing the huge length of the sword to bear against her legs. Isabella is back on the ground at almost the same distance she was before, the Ivy Blade now wrapped close to her body. It's clear she hadn't counted on Siegfried shaking off the strike she had dealt him so quickly though, for the sweep of the claymore almost catches her off-guard.

She leaps cat like over the strike, body twisting in the air; Ivy Blade releases and turns with her, swinging out in wide arc. Siegfried avoids the lash easily - still turning with the initial swing, he ducks to let it cleave the air where his head had been, but Isabella is still moving, and the whip spins with her. Only to cleanly meet the edge of the claymore as Siegfried finishes his own turn and they come back to facing each other once more.

Isabella's sneer has vanished now, and she is glaring at him through narrowed eyes. He stares her down; if she thought to find him an easy mark for her enchanted blade then she is sorely mistaken. Siegfried knows his own skill, and he knows without any conceit that he is more than a match for her. If she wishes to end his life, she will have the battle of her own against him.

It is Siegfried who moves next, feinting with the long sword before lashing out with his booted feet to take her square in the chest. He swings the sword into Chief Hold and waits for her to rise, waits to see what she'll send at him next. Siegfried feels his mind drop down into that cool, dispassionate place where it lives during battle; feels the comfort of the haft in his hand, the thick, hard wood just the right width to sit comfortably in his palm. It is a good sword, he notes, shorter than his normal use, but that is nothing he can't adapt to. A cold, dark joy rises inside him as Ivy comes at him again, and he moves and parries and counters, for he knows she cannot touch him.

Not while he is this.

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Ivy isn't quite sure whether she is enjoying herself or not. While for certain she feels a great deal of satisfaction at facing one who is surely her equal, there is also a certain frustration at not having bested him yet. The swordplay is familiar to her since Nightmare had employed most of Siegfried's skill - a skill, she is discovering, that is certainly not lacking for want of the cursed sword's power - but it has yet to provide her with a weakness to exploit. Conversely he doesn't seem to be trying to press her guard either, despite his larger sword and greater physical strength.

In fact he rarely seems to be taking the offensive at all, passively reacting to each of her attacks and countering as necessary then waiting for her to come at him again. It's typical of him, she thinks, that he approaches her in combat exactly the same way he does in their day to day interactions. Impassive and immovable, despite all the small ways in which she cuts at him; hiding behind walls of apathy, except for on the rare occasions she actually moves him enough to lash out.

Perhaps, she considers, that is the way to get through his defence. She saw it briefly at the start of the fight, but is unsure of what caused it. Arrogance? Overconfidence? If she wants to draw him out she will need to fight more wily, since direct combat appears to have failed.

Ivy draws back following the next encounter of their flashing blades, lazily whirling the Ivy Blade beside her as she paces him again. Siegfried turns with her, waiting and watchful; his shirt is almost in tatters, scratches and tiny cuts marring the pale skin beneath in half a dozen places, dying the white cotton red. If he is mindful of his small injuries he doesn't show it, instead as if sensing the change in her, his blue-green eyes are lit with cautious interest.

He has not managed to catch her with the edge of his sword, but what she lacks in open wounds she makes up for in what will undoubtedly be a colourful range of bruises.

"Sleeping well, Siegfried?"

The unexpected question catches him off-guard exactly as planned.

"What?" He splutters just as the Ivy Blade whips out and snags his ankle; he goes down hard, the claymore flying out of his grasp.

Ivy is on him in an instance, the whole of her weight thrown down onto his narrow waist, thighs clenched firmly between her own and she leans forward to press the edge of her sword up against his throat. "Do you yield?" She asks pleasantly, a honeyed tone with a hint of poison.

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Siegfried gasps for air beneath her, what little wind left to him after his fall to floor having been forcefully expelled upon her arrival on his stomach. It's all he can do to breath, much less answer her.

_Loathsome witch!_ A voice snarls in the back of his mind as he stares up at Isabella, seeing self-satisfaction written in every line of her face. _Resorting to deceit and deception in honest combat, she deserves no victory. She is weak even with her sword, take her down! _

Siegfried reacts; it's almost like instinct, so long that voice murmured in his head he almost can't help himself. His hands snap to her wrists with startling speed, wrenching her hands from their grip on the sword; her gasp of shock goes unheard as he heaves his body up, only her wide blue eyes registering at all before he smashes his forehead into the bridge of her nose.

Isabella goes gratifyingly limp in his grasp and he shoves her off him, throwing her sword to the side to land beside her. Rolling to his feet he retrieves the claymore, and shaking off the last vestiges of his breathlessness he turns to face her once more.

Isabella is staggering to her feet, sword in hand, a look of rage on her face so vicious that Siegfried thinks somewhat detachedly that he ought to be afraid of her now. She may have been willing to let him yield before, but now she is clearly out for his blood and probably won't be satisfied until she has it in buckets.

_She won't kill you, she can't,_ the voice scoffs in his mind. _Don't fear her fury, it will do nothing but make her reckless._

Reckless, perhaps, but still a force not to be taken lightly. Siegfried decides it would be best to end this quickly.

He sweeps in low, going for her legs; her jump kick takes him square in the right shoulder and sends him staggering. The bladed whip whistles by his head and a drift of blond hair floats to the ground. That was far too close. He parries and blocks the next few assaults then counters with a series of vertical strikes that meets her guard in return, until he reverses the direction of the claymore and catches her across the right side of her rib cage.

Isabella stumbles back, hand pressed to her side; there is no blood, her heavy leather bodice absorbing a blow that should have laid her right side open. Siegfried takes the opportunity of her distraction to step in next to her and swing the flat of his sword round to neatly catch her in the small of the back and launch her across the menage.

She doesn't fly too far though, falling to her knees about ten feet from him. Siegfried isn't quite prepared for the swiftness of her recovery though; fury finally giving her the strength and speed to ignore the pain, she spins in place on her knees.

"Follow!" She screeches, one finger pointing towards his head, and the sword obeys.

He can't turn his head quickly enough and agony blooms in the right side of his face. All his eye can see is red, blood pouring from where the tip of the Ivy Blade has cleanly sliced through brow and cheekbone.

_Kill her, kill the witch! _The voice howls in his head, a rising tide of black hunger crawling up from the depths of his own anger. _Kill the weakling spawn and devour her soul!_

Except that Siegfried is frozen in place, the absolute horror at the realisation of what is happening to him coupled with the burning agony in his face leaving him quite unable to move. He drops to his knees, right hand pressed against the open wound, staring but not seeing the steady trickle of his blood soak into the packed dirt floor of the menage.

"No..." he whispers, as the voice continues to rage inside with exhortations to kill.

He does not hear the footsteps coming towards him, helpless as hands grab him by the remains of his shirt and shake him violently. Siegfried doesn't react though, cannot react, every part of him engaged once more in trying to suppress the ravenous fury that is battling to free itself.

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Ivy watches Siegfried sway drunkenly, half his face awash with blood at the wound of her own making. He looks distracted though, his one good eye staring blearily through her, as if even now, despite the grievous injury, it isn't enough to break through the shield of apathy he has so effectively raised against her.

Suddenly, the seeming futility of her situation rises up around her like flood water. Despite all her efforts, she can no more destroy Soul Edge, it seems, than she can destroy Ivy Blade or herself. How does one completely undo matter? Sever an ineffable link between metal and a living evil that she can't even begin to comprehend and understand?

What hubris ever made her think she could do this?

Ivy stares down, feeling slightly dizzy, at the man almost hanging from her grasp. "Why can't you tell me?" She whispers, almost desperately.

Siegfried reels a little at the unexpected words, barely even able to focus on her through the haze of blood and pain. "I don't understand what you mean," he gasps out.

"You must know!" She demands, her voice still quiet and harsh; she shakes him again bringing her face closer till they are almost sharing the same breathe. "How could it take so much of you and leave you so ignorant?"

"I...I've told you all I can," he stutters, looking suddenly afraid, the pale blue-green of his good eye staring through her still as if he sees the face of some terrible darkness where hers should be. "I don't know what more I can give you."

"No," Ivy spits the word out like snake venom, feeling the burning in her eyes, tears of helpless anger that she hasn't shed since the days of her parents. "You haven't. You've given me nothing of the true knowledge you hold. I think you lied to me when you said you were willing to suffer, you're nothing but a coward who cannot bear to face the truth inside himself. You will not go into the dark places in your soul, you will not countenance the memories, remembering your actions or your words. You are a coward Siegfried Schtauffen and the world will be worse for it!"

He drops the claymore, hands coming up to cover his ears, to block out the tirade of two voices screaming at him from within and without, but none of it will be unheard. She is a spitting fury before him, cheeks flushed and her blue eyes bright and blazing, and inside he feels the amorphous beast rise up again, latching onto her anger and energy that is a twin to it's own; driving lust and hunger before it in desperate need to devour her.

_Givehertome! _It screams, _givehertomesheismineminemine!_

He resists it, resists with all his might and almost failing, and oh sweet Mother Mary, he might hold himself back from both of them if they would just- "Shut up!" Siegfried's voice is hoarse as he yells at her, at _it; _wanting both of them to stop and wishing they would just leave him alone in his guilt and silence, "shut up, shut up, shut up!"

He is ignored though, it's as if he hasn't even spoken. The screeching in his head overlaid by Isabella's viciously scornful voice.

"Pathetic boy, running from your Nightmare, hoping if you ignore it, it will just go away and not be real. How long has it taken to convince yourself that it's just a sword, a hunk of metal, that nothing terrible will come from it again?"

A manic laugh finally spills from his lips as her last words register; what glorious irony that she accuses him of such self-delusion while the demon inside him screams for her soul!

Perhaps it is the edge of insanity that finally gives Siegfried the strength to throw them both from him, and he does. Once more Ivy lands in the dirt, shocked at the strength of his arms, staring after the boy as he flees from her, trailing blood and heaving sobs.

She staggers to her feet, with all intent to follow him, but seconds are lost as she casts about for the abandoned Ivy Blade, and by the time she makes it to the doorway he is long gone out of sight.

Ivy stands for a moment, almost at a loss, taking great gulping breaths as her mind reels over all that has happened in these last several minutes. Then her vision blurs, she feels wetness on her cheek, and it doesn't take the press of her fingers to know the tears have finally overspilled.

It's enough, just enough to stoke her anger again, with all her despair and loathing at feeling so helpless over the circumstances of her life once more. Ivy Blade writhes in her grasp and for a moment she despises her beloved blade with all her being, for being a monument to all of her inhumanity.

Ivy screams and with it the sword unfurls and lashes it's many blades into the wood of the menage; the resultant destruction is hardly a balm to sooth her soul but it is somewhat satisfying to find something that finally bends and breaks to her will. She just about makes it clear before the roof falls in.

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Siegfried flees with barely a thought to his destination, so he is a little surprised that when he finally comes to his senses again, he finds himself charging through the corridors of Valentine Manor. His unconscious choice of sanctuary, however, becomes clear enough to him when the kitchen door looms before him and he realises he has run to Mistress Beckett like a boy to his mother.

With a shaking hand he presses down the handle and opens the door, half-hoping, yet half-dreading that he will find the old woman within.

She is there sure enough, and her jaw drops open at the sight of him, and Siegfried can only imagine what he must look like to her.

"Dear sweet Jesus, what happened?"

Siegfried cannot answer, doesn't know how; what words could explain all of the history that has lead up to this moment? Where blood from countless wounds drenches his shirt, dealt in anger by his hostess who also near cleft his face in two, while the whisper of an angry devil dies like the dwindling of a gale in his mind...

Instead he stumbles forward and into her open arms. Margaret still looks horrified but bears it well; she has born three sons and seen enough of the terrible things than can befall man and boy. With firm hands she presses him down on the bench by the kitchen table and immediately turns away to find cloth and hot water to wash his cuts.

When Margaret returns Siegfried is hunched almost double on the bench, seemingly watching the steady drip, drip of blood falling from the curve of his cheek form a puddle on the flags.

She presses a hand gently to his shoulder to catch his attention, but he doesn't acknowledge her. "Siegfried?" she asks, gently, but still there is no response. "Siegfried, love," she tries again, this time putting a hand beneath his chin to tilt his face up to look at her.

A bleary blue-green eye meets her own, and she can see in the thin set of his mouth and the slight tremor of his chin that he is on the verge of weeping. Margaret's heart almost swoons in her chest at how terribly young he looks in this instant, so hurt and afraid, and she feels an almost overwhelming need to take him to her bosom like he were her son. Instead she concentrates on what needs to be done first, and the next words that come from her lips are hard and disapproving.

"Did Lady Isabella do this?"

Siegfried doesn't answer, instead gently pulling his chin from her fingers so he is no longer looking at her. Margaret finds in it the answer to her question anyway.

She knows well enough the towering rages her mistress can work herself into, but this is the first time she has seen it taken out so directly on another human being. Margaret can't even imagine what the boy had done to provoke the Lady to have resulted in such terrible wounds.

Mistress Beckett says no more, though, leaving Siegfried to his silence, knowing well a young man's pride in the face of pain. Once the water has boiled she pulls the kettle off the fire, pours it into a bowl and cools it a little by adding wine. She then sets about cleaning his face.

Tilting his head back, Margaret dabs gently, washing off the blood till the line of the cut stands clear on his face. She is pleased to find that the long slash has managed to miss his eye, but only barely, saved by the prominence of his brow and high cheek bone.

Siegfried's eye flickers beneath the lid, glued shut by congealed blood. "Hush, now," Margaret calms him, a palm set to his good cheek, "your eye is safe but don't try to force it open just yet, it's still swollen."

Of course he doesn't understand her words and continues anyway, but the visible wince that starts the gash bleeding again ensures he now does.

Margaret shakes her a head with a grimace she reserves only for stubborn men-folk, and dabs once more at the blood. The line isn't deep and will not require stitches, thank goodness, so she will not have to call out the physic, but it will most definitely scar. A visit to the local herbal will get her a poultice to aid the healing though, and she resolves to go there this afternoon.

She is in the middle of peeling Siegfried's tattered shirt from his back when her attention is briefly distracted by her husband coming through the door, carrying the buckets from the bathroom. A nod and a shared grimace tells her the Lady is now back in the house. Margaret will ask him later to tell on the state of Lady Isabella, as a cursory check of the remaining wounds – shallow and plentiful – tells her that Siegfried faced her mistress while she was wielding her sword and that they must have been fighting.

Eventually she is able to send him off to his room, wounds washed and a pad soaked in watered wine pressed to his face. He has said not one thing since he arrived in the kitchen, and while she hopes she may get more information from her mistress she doubts that she will.

She leaves Siegfried sat on his bed, staring into space, barely acknowledging her presence and looking more lost that she has ever seen him since his arrival. Once more Margaret is seized by the desire to gather him to her breast like a small child, but she presses it down. Instead she turns her attention to finding her husband, who is waiting for her in the kitchen on her return.

"Well?" She asks, hands busying themselves with clearing away the bloodied cloths and the used wine-laced water, knowing there is no need of elaboration to her question.

William shrugs. "She says nothing, just ordered the bath water then ordered me out." He frowns down at his hands, resting on the table. "I think they may have been sparring but it got out of hand. Milady hides her discomfort well when she is in pain, but I have no doubt they gave each other a good beating; I did not see any bleeding but her bodice was nearly sliced from her body. The menage is also in ruins."

Margaret stares at him for a moment, feeling a pang of guilt at her earlier disapproval of her mistress' actions, the truth having it not so one-sided, it seems.

"I best go attend her then," she says into the silence between then.

William nods, then gets to his feet, catching her by the arm as she goes by. He brings her close, pressing a kiss to her forehead and Margaret sighs into the embrace before pulling away once more.

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The fire is still burning high in the bathroom when Margaret enters, indicative of too much fuel being piled on than was required, but enough so to heat the water as quickly as her mistress had clearly desired. Besides the singing crackle of the fire, all is silent, not even the sound of moving water floats from the part open door to the occupied bathing chamber. With quiet footsteps Margaret moves forwards, pressing a gentle hand to the door to push it further open.

Isabella is sat in the bath, as unmoving as the lack of sound betrays, hunched over and legs drawn up, she doesn't even acknowledge the arrival of her housekeeper.

Margaret's eyes run the length of the exposed back of her mistress, staring almost disbelievingly at the huge, dark bruises forming there, leaving barely any patch of skin untouched.

Shame swallows her whole, that she could ever think that her mistress would ever cause such hurt to another without cause. William was right, they had beaten each other quite royally and she wonders what on earth could have caused them to turn on each other so violently.

Wordlessly she crosses to the small table against the wall and opens the single draw, drawing forth the familiar oils she has used to bathe Isabella's bruises and muscles injuries for years passed. When she draws close, dunking the cloth she has also brought from the table to soak in the hot water, Margaret can see the slight tremors passing through her frame, that Isabella is shivering despite the heat of the water.

Gently she draws the cloth across her shoulders, letting the water run down, repeating the gesture till the skin of her back is completely wet. Meanwhile, she has held the bottle of lavender oil in the water to heat it while she worked, and now she draws it back out, pouring a generous amount into her warm palms.

Isabella doesn't flinch as Margaret presses oil-slicked hands to the bruised flesh of her back, and the housekeeper is a gentle as she can while she works the oil in. After a while, Margaret breaks the heavy silence.

"I have tended to Siegfried," she says softly. "He is well, for the most part, little damage has been done. The cuts will heal themselves, and I will go to see the herbal for a poultice for his face. His eye is safe, though the wound will scar," a pause, then, "but I'm afraid his shirt is beyond recovery."

There is no reaction. Not to the news that she has managed to avoid maiming him, or to Margaret's attempt at humour. So the housekeeper cleaves to the silence and lets her hands continue to work. Eventually she is done and she stands up again, groaning a little as she stretches out the muscles of her own back, a reminder of her advancing years.

"Thankyou, mistress," Isabella's voice is low and so quiet that Margaret almost misses the words. "If you would kindly find me a bath sheet, I will be done here."

"Of course My Lady," the housekeeper says as she puts away the oils. "Will there be anything more?"

"Not today, I will be in the laboratory and I do not wish to be disturbed."

"What of your meals?"

"Prepare me a cold lunch, enough to see me through to the evening. That will be all."

"Very well, My Lady."

Margaret does as she is asked, and she sees nothing more of her mistress that day. To her word she duly visits the herbal but finds on her return that Siegfried has vanished from his room and William has no idea where he has gone.

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Siegfried sits out in the pavilion facing the river. His face is raw and throbbing, but at least he has managed to work his eye open again. It sees with a faint tint of red though, as if the blood has dyed his vision, but he is sure it will fade soon enough.

He is trying not to think, as he watches the day ripen into afternoon, a slow, golden haze descending on the world. It seems so peaceful, and if he ignores everything, Siegfried thinks he can almost feel part of it.

The sound of claws clicking on the wood makes him turn, and one of Isabella's dogs stands behind looking at him with an almost askance expression. Siegfried reaches out a hand without fear, not because he does not fear the consequences, he has never forgotten that Isabella has them trained to kill, but because he has lost all sense of it this day.

In the face of the monster that had risen inside him once more this morning, little else has the power to scare him.

The dog seems friendly enough, though, sniffing his outstretched hand before trotting up to sit beside him. Siegfried rests his hand to the back of it's shoulders and the dog doesn't flinch or try to attack him, but instead remains slouched, tongue lolling as it too fixes it's eyes to the lazy river.

Soul Edge is back, Siegfried makes himself think. Or, perhaps it never left, just slept inside him till something provoked it awake. He forces himself to remember the way it reared up at the sight of Isabella, victoriously astride his chest, eyes lit with cruel pleasure.

It still wants her, he thinks. Or... And another, more unpleasant thought occurs: or maybe it's just me. It is difficult, his memories are clear, even if he doesn't want to remember them. What isn't clear is whether they belong to him or the sword, it becomes difficult to define between the two of them. Was it truly Soul Edge that was screaming in his head? Or was it just himself, a part forged in the darkness of the sword's presence in his soul, forever tainted? It has gone so quiet now, so very quiet as if it had never been, and in the face of it, this does not seem so ridiculous a thought.

Maybe it is the reason and the source of his nightmares, for the continuing fear that the evil is rising again, because it now lives inside him too. Perhaps he will always be like this, that even if he managed to thoroughly remove the sword from this world perhaps part of it would remain in him, as indelibly marked by it as Isabella.

It is a miserable thought, but it rings with a little to much truth. Maybe they have both missed the vital aspect to their planned destruction of Soul Edge: that their own lives must be the price of success.

It is most definitely a miserable thought.

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Ivy thinks she has finally found the truth of it. It lies before her in the sliver of metal from the blade of her own sword, and vial of blood drained from a cut to the back of her arm. There is nothing she understands better in this world than her own sword and herself, and since they are creatures of Soul Edge perhaps the answer to it's destruction will be found in her own.

A morbid thought, but it pleases her to have it.

She has laboured through the day and well into the night, finally deciding she has made progress enough to reward herself with a soft bed and a few hours sleep. To understand more fully the link between herself and her blade would have pleased her greatly in other circumstances, currently it now only serves to show her how deep the essence of Soul Edge lies within her. It's not just her blood, but her very flesh; she knows now why the woman in scarlet recognised her for what she is so readily. It reeks in her aura, it echoes out from her soul for all who have the eyes to see it. It is quite probably the reason for the wellspring of anger and cruelty that so often finds an outlet in her voice or by her hand.

She is not a good person, she has done terrible things, that when she stops long enough to think about it, makes her squirm. Not for what she did though, but for why. The song of her killing blade is the song of her soul. Ivy adores the cut and thrust of battle, but never more so when her opponents are weaker and out matched, when she can fall into their soft bodies with desperate abandon and gleeful dismemberment. The way they fall, the way they die...

Ivy stands in her bedroom and stares at her shadowed reflection, flickering in the light of a single, lonely candle. Trying to see how she has become this and not been it all along.

A small black book still sits on the side table, proclaiming it's own truth, but it is one that is becoming difficult to believe in. Somewhere inside it, hidden in the words, is the truth that stares back at her from the mirror. And she will find it.

Ivy feels she doesn't want to believe that she ever had a choice.

* * *

**A/N: OMG I finally finished it. That is all.**


	6. Chapter 6

It is a strange kind of détente that persists in the house of Valentine in the weeks following the altercation between Siegfried and Isabella. There is never an apology from either side, not for the initial provocation or the terrible injury dealt, but there is peace of a sort; a peace that lies in limited interaction and in as few words as possible shared. In the way he ignores how she spent over a week almost limping from the extent of her bruises and the way her eyes don't quite meet his face to avoid the livid line of the scar that bisects his right cheek.

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If there is ever a turning point in this strange relationship they have, then this surely is it. Siegfried has been wary of Isabella ever since that morning, and it is easier to avoid her, to avoid having to speak as it seems the only things they have to discuss have far too terrible repercussions.

It helps that Isabella appears to be in complete agreement with him over it. Two days she spends locked in her laboratory and he spends sat in the library reading, since he has nothing else to do than try to improve his English. When she finally emerges it is Master Beckett who kindly ejects him so she can claim the room back from him again; Siegfried takes the book with him, doubting she will miss it since it has nothing to do with science, sorcery or cursed swords.

When Margaret comes to him the next morning bearing breakfast, she also brings more books, courtesy it seems of his brooding hostess. It is followed later that afternoon by the sword he had left in the menage, extracted from the firewood Isabella had made of it following their bout.

"She said you might find the desire to practice with it," is the old man's explanation as he carefully props it up against the wall by the dresser.

Siegfried wonders if Beckett has omitted any sneering emphasis on the word 'practice'. He can almost hear Isabella speaking the words clearly in his own mind, but the butler just meets his blank gaze, steadily and without any hint that the sword is being presented as a mockery.

Siegfried watches him leave and wonders if he ought to consider doing the same.

88

The weeks pass though and he is still here, and perhaps it is because he can't think of anywhere else to go. Or perhaps it is because he can't bring himself to leave Soul Edge, sleeping beneath the house of the woman it spawned, just in case, just in case...

Siegfried isn't sure what he will do should 'just in case' come to pass and what 'just in case' might actually be, but he's too engaged in his own internal struggles after a while to think about it too deeply.

If Isabella actually cared any more, perhaps she would be pleased that Siegfried is finally doing as she so wants and entertaining his inner demons. Or to be more accurate: his inner demons are entertaining themselves with him. The voice that drove him during his fight with Isabella has yet to materialise with the same strength and fervour as it did then, but it's soft, sibilant whisper has began to permeate his nightmares. Sweetly coaxing, gently reminding him of all of what he did, and why he did it, and how _good _it had felt...

He prefers the dreams where he languishes in the void because it doesn't bother him then, and in the harsh light of a summers day, glaring at the sword still leaning against the dresser gathering dust, he thinks how terrible it is that his only solace is a different kind of nightmare.

Siegfried takes up the sword in the end, driven by a long ago remembrance of the peace it used to bring to his adolescent rages when he would go through the practice forms, and praying it would bring him peace of another sort now. He almost feels the muscles in his shoulders uncoil as he swings the claymore up into chief hold and as he begins, he finds the single-minded concentration required is the cool tonic he has been searching for.

Yes, it is good not to think at all...

888

The night is old when he awakes, into the darkness that lies between moon-set and the onset of dawn, and for a moment the black oblivion of the room about him causes a surge of cold panic at the thought that he may still be trapped in his dream. Trapped in the awful void that held him for a countless time before being spat out into searing daylight and the sight of a burning blue sky that nearly blinded him.

Siegfried struggles without thought, tangled in the bedclothes, senseless to the soft blankets that surround him. Instead what he feels is the barely tangible tendrils that wrapped round and round his body and soul, twisting the one while binding the other. The pain was very real though, and when he hits the floor it jerks a strangled cry out with his winded breath. Ironically it is the pain of impact, a different kind of hurt, that brings him back to his senses and he lies gasping on floorboards, staring into the dark space above while trying to convince his mind that he is in reality on the floor of his room. His room in the house of Isabella Valentine, who, he reminds himself, will soon be returned from her fortnight long trip. There is no void about him, it is just the plain darkness of the night that has come and gone for aeons. There is no wicked sword lying beyond, waiting for the time to seize his mind back from him for that abomination still lies in crumbling repose in the cellars below, bound by what sorcery Isabella commands. The only thing to fear, as always, is the horrors within his own soul and that he has some control over.

This is what Siegfried tells himself as he picks himself up from the floor, blindly seeking the curtains so he can at least let the starlight in and reassure himself. Once he has some semblance of sight Siegfried wraps his robe around himself and leaves the room. He hasn't any idea of where he is going, but the wandering helps when he has just woken from one of his nightmares; better this than to stay lying abed, waiting for sleep to come and whisk him right back to where he doesn't want to be.

He is somewhat surprised to see light seeping from under Isabella's door as he passes by; he hadn't realised she had arrived home that evening, it must have been quite late and he already abed if so. Given the choice between the darkness of his own ruminations and Isabella's company it is a decision of a few seconds thought to stop and knock. The response from within is somewhat muffled and Siegfried chooses to accept it as permission to enter.

Isabella is hunched over a small fire in the grate of her fireplace, steadily feeding it pages from a book in her hands. Her head snaps around as the door opens.

"I said 'go away,' you idiot!" Ivy snarls at him, snapping the book closed in her hand. "Are you deaf?"

Siegfried shrugs without answering and ambles further into her bedroom, settling himself on the stool of her dresser.

She rises from her knees, tall and angry and very intimidating, but Siegfried sits, unmoved by the display. He has been on the receiving end of her temper enough times to know the danger but he has ceased to care, now, when she is angry or why.

"Don't just sit there," she snaps after a moment in which the man across from her doesn't react, "begone!"

"I know why I'm awake at this hour," Siegfried observes, quite unperturbed, "but you," he takes in that the robe she wears is covering underclothes not a nightgown, "you don't look as though you've even gone to bed yet."

Isabella takes a step back, defensively pulling her robe tighter about herself, the small black book still in hand as she fumbles with the belt. "That's because I haven't, you imbecile," she utters, turning from him. "I only got back several hours ago and I have had things to do, which you have just interrupted, now kindly take yourself elsewhere."

"What was so important it could not be done during the light of day?" Siegfried stretches his legs out in front of him, leaning back against the dresser, his very pose telling her he has no intention of going anywhere just yet.

Of course it infuriates Isabella immensely, and he wonders if it's too early in the morning for even her to consider violence. He has no doubt he'd find her sword buried in the bedclothes somewhere, or at least at hand by the side of her bed.

Surprisingly the response he gets is a defeated sigh and a question in return. "What are you doing in here, Siegfried?"

He shrugs again, staring down at where his toes are busy pushing trails in the lush pile of a sheepskin rug. "I had a nightmare," he tells her.

She seems somewhat unimpressed, when he glances up to take in her reaction to an admission he had previously refused to give, but overall her expression is inscrutable as she eyes him; which is somewhat unexpected. He thought she would at least sneer at his almost blasé announcement of something she had been quite well aware of for months without him saying a word.

Apparently not though, apparently she is going to stare at him with almost blank eyes, standing in a way that Siegfried fancies makes her look quite vulnerable: one hand clutching the small black book to her chest, while the other is wrapped protectively round the knot of the belt binding her robe shut.

He wonders almost idly if she might be concerned about her virtue, what with him being in her bedroom. It would be a fair enough concern to have, if she knew anything of his past before that damnable sword, since the women of his earlier youth had enjoyed a great deal of attention from him.

Then Siegfried remembers the day she found him, and what she was wearing, which was a great deal less than what she is wearing now, and completely discards the idea that Isabella Valentine would ever be concerned for her virtue.

Finally coming to a decision, Isabella turns from him and back to the fire, dropping once more to her knees, her back completely to him so he can't see the book once more open in her hands. "I do plan to find my bed before daybreak, you have till then. Stay if you must but do not come any closer than that."

And just like that, Siegfried feels his body relax and uncoil. He is just a little surprised at just how much he desires her company; harsh and irritable as it can be, it feels better to have her brooding silence in the room along with his own than to spend the remaining hours wandering the empty corridors of her large, desolate home.

Siegfried watches her silently as the time passes and Isabella slowly tears each page from the book in her lap to feed it to the flickering, hungry flames. It is the only light at that end of the room and it delineates her sharply in lines of light and shadow. He comes to realise only after watching for a time, that her movements are steadily slowing, shoulders hunching and head drooping. Siegfried wonders for a moment if she weeps, but no sound is coming from her. She pulls one more page from the book, and it must be the final one, because she doesn't move again after that.

Isabella remains in place, silently watching the dying fire it seems, and all remembrance of Siegfried being in the room gone from her thoughts.

Carefully, slowly, like a man approaching a sleeping bear, Siegfried quietly gets to his feet and closes the distance between them till he can see her clearly. The book's binding is a scrap of black leather in her hands, while she stares into the glowing embers with that same almost-blank gaze she had fixed him with earlier. Except, he finally realises, that it wasn't just him, but his face she had stared at, eyes fixed upon the scar that she had given him.

For a moment, there is a powerful desire in him to know what had lain between the covers of the book, to know what has been chasing her through the days and nights since their last, rather violent, exchange. To know what has brought her to this point where she looks at him without pity or disdain, without even anger, and it punctures the apathy that has rounded his days since waking to the sunlight.

Perhaps that is what causes him to reach out a hand to catch her attention by touch, rather than safely calling from a distance. His fingers barely brush her shoulder but it is enough; she spins to her feet, a rising force that catches him off-guard enough to propel him across the room. Falling back against the bed, Siegfried lands on the mattress, only missing the bedpost by bare inches; but he is more mindful right now, however, of the woman approaching him.

There is no anger in her expression, but the look on her face is still terrible, and when she comes close enough he can see the deep, haunted look in her glassy, blue eyes. It is a moment of recognition for Siegfried, almost like looking into a mirror, the depth of the despair he suddenly sees in her, so wide open to the world and to him. Something that feels like a kindred emotion stirs in his chest. He knows this, he knows this very well, and so it seems does she.

He pushes himself up off the bed, takes her slender waist in both hands and draws her closer. Her arms flex as though she is about to move, to perhaps fend him off, but they drop to her side again and her posture changes once more, to slump wearily before him.

Siegfried finally comes to his feet, his hands moving from her waist to wrap round her neck and cup her jaw; he pulls her head down slightly and presses his lips to hers.

Isabella doesn't resist, but she doesn't really kiss him back either, he takes it as a consent all the same. He continues to tease her mouth with his own until she finally opens against him, she jerks a little when he slides his tongue in against hers but relaxes quickly enough. By this time her fingers are clutching loosely at the sides of his robe and Siegfried decides it's an improvement enough from when he started.

He pulls out of the kiss to gaze at Isabella, just a little warily, not sure if she will allow him to follow through on what he really wants to do with her. The despair is still a little too naked on her face, but not so terrible as it was before. She seems to sense his question without him having to utter it and her consent is in the way she still stands before him, not moving away, arms back by her sides and not moving to stop him.

In another time, in another age, Siegfried perhaps would have balked at taking a woman this way, but he is no longer that boy so full of himself and the lust for life and death. He feels no better than she in this moment, and to find some kind of brief escape in this release is all that he cares to do.

He unties the belt and pushes the robe from her shoulders and Isabella gamely assists in the removal of her underclothes till she stands bare before him. Siegfried then shrugs his own robe from his shoulders and leads her to lie on the bed before crawling on beside her.

He leans over and kisses her again, moving his free hand up over her belly to cover one full breast and gently kneads the soft flesh with his fingers. She makes no sound, except for when he finally pinches the rigid nipple and she gives a slight gasp.

Siegfried moves over her fully then, and Isabella obligingly parts her legs for him, though that isn't quite his intention just yet. He presses his lips to her throat first, then her left shoulder, then lower, lingering on each breast in turn, and now one of her hands comes up to cup the back of his head while the other slides against his shoulder. Her breaths deepen, but still no sound of pleasure comes from her.

Siegfried is past caring on that now though, his manhood is heavy and throbbing with need and he will take her in whatever way she is offering herself.

Finally his hands reach down to her thighs and part them further, the flesh between her legs is slick to his touch and she squirms just a little when his probing fingers stroke over and over her tender bud before finding her entrance and press inside. It's enough, he decides, and positioning himself just so he leans forward and begins to push himself in.

Isabella does moan then, though it seems more like a sound of discomfort, she arches her back beneath him and clutches at the covers with both hands as Siegfried tries to push through the tightness without hurting her. He perseveres though, and once he has partly sheathed himself inside her, he leans further over to rest his arms either side of her shoulders.

Slowly, he starts to move. Isabella's hands come up once more, to press against his ribs and curve under his shoulder, her thighs moving to cradle his. Siegfried drops his face into the crook of her neck and he can feel her breath against his right ear. She moans again, softly, just under her breath.

He does not know how long it lasts. Siegfried's world narrows in till all that exists lies between her belly and his thighs. He feels he is barely himself any more, just a rampant need slaking it's thirst as nature intended. Still Isabella lies quiet beneath him, though the initial resistance is long gone and her breath continues to blow hotly against his ear in gentle gasps.

Siegfried grunts as he begins to move quicker; the gentle rocking of his hips against hers giving way to hard, decisive thrusts, as he feels the slow start of the wind-up towards his climax. He rises up from his elbows, head bowed and his lover hidden from him by the curtain of his hair and closed eyelids, his hips dictating the rhythm and speed without thought. It's enough to start carrying him away, but finally, _finally_, his ears discover that he has managed to force sound from between her lips; and he focuses on that, even as he feels the tension grip his body and the pleasure start in his balls.

Then suddenly the world is ending, crashing down in a cacophony of heat and sound, which is all him and him alone. His eyes screw shut, and for a second, he sees a flash of bright daylight.

After a while, Siegfried opens his eyes and raises his head once more. Isabella lays still beneath him, eyes closed and breathing softly. She could be asleep, or falling asleep. He shifts inside her and her expression flinches. Ah well, he thinks, not quite asleep yet. Gently he pulls out to fall to her side and Siegfried watches her for a moment to see if she will wake.

Slowly her eyes come open and she stares up at the canopy of the bed, one hand coming to rest between her breasts while the other strokes an idle circle on her belly.

"Are you well?" Siegfried asks after a moment, when it becomes obvious she will say nothing on her own or even acknowledge him it seems.

Her head turns towards him, eyes finally meeting his in frank consideration; he then sees the hand on her belly move further down between her legs and she winces. "I'm a little sore," she says. Her hand comes up again and she holds it up to inspect her fingers as she rubs at them with her thumb. "I believe you may have made me bleed, but I suppose that's to be expected."

Siegfried's brow furrows as he struggles to understand her meaning, but then it dawns and he stares at her in horror. "Isabella, you... I... You..." he sputters, unable to get the words out.

Isabella looks back at him again, irritation once more marring her expression. "What? Did you believe I had lain with a man before?"

Siegfried's mouth opens before he has words to speak, desperately searching for an answer that wouldn't offend before finally leaving his jaw to flap open helplessly.

Isabella sits up, the fire now back in her eyes as she pins him with a glare. "For heaven's sake, Siegfried, I'm unmarried! Do you honestly believe I've spent my years dallying with whatever man happens to catch my fancy?"

At least this question lets Siegfried find his voice to answer with. "No, of course not! I can't say I'd even thought about it at all!" Still he cannot help but stare at the woman before him. He imagined their fornication to be little more than a brief respite from the troubles in their hearts, had he known she was proffering up her maidenhead to him she would have benefited from a much more considerate lover.

Siegfried almost winces, when he thinks of how he penetrated her with so little preamble and mercilessly pushed passed the resistance he encountered within. It was no wonder she was sore.

"Besides," Isabella sniffs as she rolls off the bed, picking her robe up off the floor to shrug back into it, "since it seems I'm to be cursed with the sins of my wretched 'father', it's doubtful I shall ever be marrying, or indeed," and she looks back at him over one shoulder, "enjoying any kind of carnal relations considering what might come of it."

Moving purposefully towards the windows, Isabella tweaks back the curtain to let in the watery grey light of dawn. "I wonder," she murmurs, almost to herself, but she might just be addressing Siegfried too, "should I be with child, would I birth a monster?"

Apparently she is addressing him, as she then looks over at Siegfried. "What kind of child would you father now, Siegfried, after what you have become?"

The horror as he stares into her face comes back to squeeze his heart, but for different reasons entirely. The question she poses is perfectly valid, but worse still as he searches her face, her eyes, he finds he struggles to see the sanity there, despair having given way to something much worse.

Isabella is just as broken as he is, he finally realises, and how could he have ever doubted that would not be the case? He has seen what has been done to her. He is, after all, in large part responsible for some of her suffering – though if not he, would the sword not have claimed some other foolish seeker to do the same? Their lives have been so hideously twisted and warped by the evil of the sword named Soul Edge that nothing good could ever come from either of them.

Blood poisoned and soul corrupted; because of this he knows he cannot touch her ever again, nor rightly could he touch any woman, for fear of what might follow. And the thought hurts. How could life dare to come from him when he has done such terrible things? How could it dare to come from her when all that might be brought forth is something monstrous? Something worse than either of them, like the unspeakable creatures that terrible sword had spawned in the past...

The understanding of all of this comes almost like a lightning strike and Siegfried feels the wellspring of his own whispering madness begin to gurgle up inside in response. Without a thought he scrambles from the bed, running for the door, mindless of his nudity and almost tripping over his own feet. His desperation to get away from her before the demon spewed forth from his soul once more to wrap him in it's coils, to make him try take and devour Isabella in a way wholly different from when they had fought.

And then it is upon him and for a moment he exults in his freedom.

Untold strength pours through him and every base desire that ever was culminates in the screaming, yearning need for more, for the sustenance it gives. _This!_ This is what it is to have a soul! And Soul Edge could never have enough...

Siegfried screams horribly and comes back to himself with a start; he doesn't remember fleeing from Isabella and the awful stare of her madness, he doesn't remember stumbling desperately back to his room and throwing himself against the door. The door that resembles the one in his head through which he has fled from Soul Edge. He just stares at his right arm and counts the fingers over and over, to make sure that he has five and that five fingers are what should be there and that it's branded into his brain to never ever forget this again...

888

Deep beneath the living floors of the Valentine mansion Soul Edge lies. A crude platform rising up above the water level and painted with arcane signs that glow gently in the all consuming darkness is all that holds the crumbling sword back from the rest of the world.

Soul Edge has been sleeping since it's defeat at the point of Soul Calibur, sister-blade and bane-blade. Yet it's time in the void was well spent and in his dreams Inferno stretches and prepares to wake.

* * *

**A/N: Well then. I wrote this fairly quickly but it took forever to edit as I just couldn't get parts of it to read properly. If anyone was surprised Ivy was still toting the 'V' plates, I swear that hadn't been my intention when I first set out to write this chapter, and I'm still surprised when I re-read it myself. I have to admit, though, that I do very much like the almost supreme irony of a character that overtly sexual as being so completely chaste. ;op**


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